EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU finance ministers have given their political blessing to an overhaul of the bloc's rules on savings tax, in a bid to clamp down on tax havens. The move to change the EU's Savings Tax Directive - which came into force in 2005 - comes by way of pressure from Germany in response to a massive tax fraud, reported in February, which involved Liechtenstein and some 1,400 individuals, including 600 German citizens. The persons had set up funds in the tiny principality in order to avoid taxes in their home countries, prompting Berlin to urge other European countries to force banks and financial institutions in tax havens to disclose information about their clients based in EU member states. Following the meeting of national finance chiefs in Brussels on Wednesday (14 May), EU tax commissioner Laszlo Kovacs signalled that he would amend the current rules in a way advocated by Germany, improving the exchange of information between banks and extending the scope of the directive.
Guardian - Polly Toynbee - Goodbye, good times. Now Labour has to show just whose side it is on
That might be politically survivable if Labour could honestly say the pain was fairly shared. That's exactly what European finance ministers debated fiercely on Wednesday. Executive pay was, said the EU monetary affairs commissioner, "scandalous" when so many employees have their pay pegged in the name of keeping inflation down. Luxembourg's prime minister, who chairs the Eurozone finance ministers, said these "excesses" in pay and bonuses were "a social scourge" that had fuelled the banking crisis. Germany and the Netherlands are introducing new taxes on high bonuses, pressing for EU-wide action. Germany urges a €1m ceiling on what a company can deduct from tax for any employee's pay. Britain, of course, will have none of it, and Alistair Darling sat through the debate in silence. When Brown introduced his policy package as a recipe for "opportunity-rich Britain", one Labour wag remarked that Britain was indeed a land of opportunity for the rich.
We know whose side they're on. keep to the Fen Causeway
(Written by the "City Editor", an approoriate label, I suppose) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
