Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during a campaign rally in Metro Manila, Philippines.
Hard Numbers: Marcos’ tax bill, Russian cash in Swiss banks, Cubans sentenced, Mali vs French media
3.9 billion: Philippine presidential frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr. owes a whopping $3.9 billion in unpaid taxes from the estate of his dad, the late dictator. Marcos, of course, says this is fake news, but his rivals hope it'll hurt his chances in the May 9 election.
213 billion: That’s the amount in dollars of Russian wealth stashed away in Switzerland’s banks, according to the Swiss Bankers Association. The revelation is a surprise move from famously neutral Switzerland, which has long prided itself on bank secrecy.
30: A total 28 Cubans have been sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for joining rare anti-government protests last summer. The Castro brothers may be gone, but the regime is cracking down on dissent as hard as ever.
71: Mali says it’ll suspend French state-funded stations RFI radio and France 24 for reporting what it calls “false allegations” by the UN and Human Rights Watch that Malian soldiers had killed 71 civilians since December. Relations between Bamako and Paris have cratered since the 2020 coup in Mali and the subsequent withdrawal of French troops.Representation of Bitcoin cryptocurrency and Indian flag.
Hard Numbers: Indian crypto tax, Peronistas vs IMF, Guinea-Bissau coup attempt, Austrian vax mandate
30: India plans to introduce a 30% tax on capital gains from trading cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Last November, the government threatened to ban all crypto transactions after the central bank warned they pose a risk to the country's financial stability.
44.5 billion: A top lawmaker from the ruling Peronista party has quit over Argentina's recent deal to restructure $44.5 billion of IMF debt. Máximo Kirchner and his mom, the powerful VP Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, both reject IMF demands to rein in spending in order to defer debt payments.
5: The president of Guinea-Bissau survived an attempted coup on Tuesday night. Had it been successful, it would be the fifth military takeover in West Africa in only 18 months after earlier coups in Mali, Guinea, Mali again, and Burkina Faso.
3,600: If you're an anti-vaxxer living in Austria, you're now on the hook for up to 3,600 euros ($4,502) for refusing to get a COVID jab. That's the stick, but here's a carrot from a Viennese brothel — one of our top 5 crazy vax incentives of 2021.Podcast: A former US diplomat rates Biden’s first presidential trip abroad
Listen: Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder weighs in on US President Joe Biden's first trip abroad, which included a very important first stop at the G7 summit in the United Kingdom, and the way forward for the US and its closest friends. Did he convince allies that "America is back" and ready to resume its leadership role in global affairs? And if so, does it even matter if Americans still need to be convinced that US engagement in the world is vital? Daalder speaks with Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.Demonstrators take part in a protest against the tax reform of President Ivan Duque's government in Bogota.
Don’t tax the dead: Colombia’s crisis
There's never a great time to impose higher taxes on funeral services — but doing it in the middle of a raging pandemic is an especially bad move. Yet that was one of a number of measures that the Colombian government proposed last week in a controversial new tax bill that has provoked the country's largest and most violent protests in decades.
In the days since, the finance minister has resigned, the tax reform has been pulled, and President Iván Duque has called for fresh dialogue with activists, union leaders, and opposition politicians.
But demonstrations, vandalism, and deadly clashes with police have only intensified. Two dozen people are dead, 40 are missing, and the UN has criticized Colombian police for their heavy-handed response.
How'd we get here? The Colombian government has a common math problem: it spends more money than it raises.
Even before the pandemic, the country's oil exports — a major source of government revenue — were dwindling, and over the past year, the deficit tripled. Now, to pull the country out of its worst economic crisis in decades, it's even more urgent to top up state coffers.
But Colombia has one of the lowest tax hauls of any country in the OECD, and ratings agencies warn that without a tax reform of some kind, a downgrade awaits. That would make it more expensive for Colombia to borrow money abroad, depleting state resources even further.
Duque's proposal would have raised levies on corporations and the rich, while boosting social spending to alleviate poverty. But it also expanded taxes for the middle class and poor, eliminated exemptions for pensions, and added a sales tax to many staple consumer goods and services. Even water would have gotten more expensive. Water!
The math may have been sound but, in a country reeling from the pandemic, the politics were horrific. Over the past year, 3 million more Colombians fell into poverty, raising the poverty rate by 7 points to a staggering 42 percent of the population (source in Spanish.) Thousands of businesses have closed. And the country is now in the throes of a third COVID wave: daily new cases have soared sixfold in the past two months.
Small wonder that when the tax bill was unveiled, three-quarters of Colombians supported a national strike in response.
But these protests are about more than taxes. For several years, a large part of Colombian society has been upset about rising inequality, an epidemic of violence against human rights leaders, rising crime in the cities, and poor healthcare and education.
Just before the COVID crisis started, in late 2019, mass protests over these issues shook Bogotá for days. Today's protests are in part a resurgence of grievances bottled up — and made worse — by the pandemic.
Elections loom. Next year, Colombians will elect a new president. Term limits keep Duque from running again — and with his meager 30 percent approval rating, that's probably just as well. But the social crisis has boosted the fortunes of Senator Gustavo Petro, a leftwing former mayor of Bogotá who got his start in political life as part of the M-19 urban guerrilla movement.
A recent poll showed Petro would get close to 40 percent of the vote if the ballot were held today, an increase of 15 points since last fall (source in Spanish). That a leftwinger should be so popular is a sea change in Colombia, long a center-right country in which decades of war with Marxist-inspired militants — and the recent disaster next door in socialist-led Venezuela — had created a stigma around leftist politics at the national level.
Colombia's crisis is also a broader caution: Many countries are staggering out of the pandemic with weak state finances. The IMF recently found that debt as a percentage of GDP in emerging market economies soared 10 points last year to an average of 65 percent. Meanwhile, poverty and social spending needs have only risen as a result of the economic crisis.
The current upheaval in Colombia is a taste of what could come for many middle-income and poorer countries if they botch the politics of raising revenue.
But no matter how they go about it — not taxing the dead is a smart way to avoid antagonizing the living.
Will tech giants be taxed for worldwide profits with a global tax rate?
Get insights on the latest news about emerging trends in cyberspace from Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center and former European Parliamentarian:
Today, we talk about the "T word", as I often refer to: taxation. But that taboo is finally broken in the United States.
How would a global minimum corporate tax rate, like the one Janet Yellen has called for, affect Big Tech?
Now, ideally, it would ensure a level playing field for all companies, and European leaders embrace the US change of course, but they did add that there should be ways to tax tech giants for their global profits. It's a demand that is widely shared in Europe. So the hope is that that can be arranged between all OECD members.
What has been Silicon Valley's reaction so far?
I haven't heard so much from Silicon Valley, so perhaps they're lobbying US leaders behind the scenes, more so than publicly. But it does look like the US government needs to compromise on that digital tax question to get their global minimum corporate tax rate done at all.
- How can the Biden administration rein in Big Tech? - GZERO Media ›
- The Graphic Truth: Who dominates social media? - GZERO Media ›
- The Big Tech breakup: Could it happen? - GZERO Media ›
- Kara Swisher on Big Tech's big problem - GZERO Media ›
- Multinational corporations aren't about to give up on global business - GZERO Media ›
The Graphic Truth: What companies actually pay in taxes
On top of the global debate about enacting a minimum global tax for multinational corporations, there's another growing movement in a host of countries for all firms to pay their fair share in taxes, whether they do business abroad or not. Many US corporations are notorious for getting away with paying little to no federal taxes by taking advantage of multiple loopholes in the tax code — which is true for a lot of them. However, as a whole the average percentage of income US corporations do pay taxes on — their effective tax rate — is in reality not much lower than the legal national rate due to additional taxes levied by some US states and cities — the same as in many other developed economies. We compare the official and the effective corporate tax rates in some nations around the world.
Australia rushes through tax cuts in Covid-19 economic stimulus
SYDNEY (REUTERS) - Australia's Parliament approved A$17.8 billion (S$17.34 billion) in personal tax cuts on Friday (Oct 9), quickly pushing through measures announced earlier this week to support the country's coronavirus-ravaged economy.
Indonesia adds Twitter, Zoom to tech companies that must pay 10% VAT
JAKARTA (REUTERS) - Indonesia on Tuesday (Sept 8) added 12 more companies, including social media firm Twitter and video-conferencing site Zoom, to a list of internet-based businesses that must pay a 10 per cent value-added tax on sales.