Guest 717- Registered: 16 Jun 2011
- Posts: 468
....and there was me thinking this thread was about Eurovision!!
Keeps politics to myself
Guest 716- Registered: 9 Jun 2011
- Posts: 4,010
'A bad day for tax cheats': EU to crack down on those seeking to escape heavy bills
Officials have said that the bloc loses €1 trillion a year through tax dodging
European leaders are under pressure to do more to crack down on individuals and corporations
seeking to escape heavy tax bills, with Austria and Luxembourg giving the strongest signals yet
that they would finally drop opposition to sharing bank account data.
All 27 heads of state meeting in Brussels agreed in principle to start automatically sharing bank
account information by the end of the year, but EU officials cautioned that similar promises in the past
had failed to translate into action.
Pressure is mounting on politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make sure that both individuals
and multinational corporations like Google, Apple and Starbucks pay a fair amount of tax, especially
as many voters face increasing economic hardship and higher taxes.
EU officials have said that the bloc loses €1 trillion a year through tax dodging, and were pushing the
leaders to commit to the legislation know as the Savings Directive. It has been languishing unsigned
for decades because of opposition from Austria and Luxembourg, which have a history of banking
secrecy and fear losses for their financial sectors.
