The Wall Street Journal reports The Obama administration will propose lowering the top income-tax rate for corporations to 28% from 35%, but would raise overall tax revenue by eliminating dozens of popular deductions, in an effort to restructure the corporate tax code. The proposal, which will be announced Wednesday, would lower the “effective” tax rate on manufacturers to “no more than 25%,” according to a senior administration official, down from the current average rate of about 32%. It raises taxes on oil and gas companies that would lose many large deductions and subsidies. The plan would require U.S. companies operating overseas, to pay—for the first time—a minimum tax rate on their foreign earnings.
The Wall Street Journal also reports Fitch Ratings has downgraded Greece’s credit rating to C from triple C Wednesday, after confirmation of the country’s second bailout package, which includes a debt exchange that will force bondholders, to take a loss on their holdings of Greek debt. Separately, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday that the Greek government has signed an international agreement, on co-operation in tax issues that will help it crack down on evasion, an issue it has made a priority, as it struggles to cut its large budget deficit and meet the terms of a package of “bailout loans” from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Reuters reports Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn spent the night in a seven-square-meter cell before French police questioned him for a second day on Wednesday over what he knew about prostitutes that friends brought to him.
Strauss-Kahn, whose IMF job and prospects of becoming next French president, ended in May after his arrest in New York on, now dropped, sex assault charges, has been plagued since, by the prostitution investigation in the northern French city of Lille.
Finally Bloomberg reports China Manufacturing Data Show Risk of Deeper Slowdown on Exports. China’s manufacturing may shrink for a fourth month in February, indicating the world’s second- biggest economy remains vulnerable to a deeper slowdown, as Europe’s crisis caps exports and the housing market cools.
The Wall Street Journal reports The Obama administration will propose lowering the top income-tax rate for corporations to 28% from 35%, but would raise overall tax revenue by eliminating dozens of popular deductions, in an effort to restructure the corporate tax code. The proposal, which will be announced Wednesday, would lower the “effective” tax rate on manufacturers to “no more than 25%,” according to a senior administration official, down from the current average rate of about 32%. It raises taxes on oil and gas companies that would lose many large deductions and subsidies. The plan would require U.S. companies operating overseas, to pay—for the first time—a minimum tax rate on their foreign earnings.
The Wall Street Journal also reports Fitch Ratings has downgraded Greece’s credit rating to C from triple C Wednesday, after confirmation of the country’s second bailout package, which includes a debt exchange that will force bondholders, to take a loss on their holdings of Greek debt. Separately, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said Wednesday that the Greek government has signed an international agreement, on co-operation in tax issues that will help it crack down on evasion, an issue it has made a priority, as it struggles to cut its large budget deficit and meet the terms of a package of “bailout loans” from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Reuters reports Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn spent the night in a seven-square-meter cell before French police questioned him for a second day on Wednesday over what he knew about prostitutes that friends brought to him.
Strauss-Kahn, whose IMF job and prospects of becoming next French president, ended in May after his arrest in New York on, now dropped, sex assault charges, has been plagued since, by the prostitution investigation in the northern French city of Lille.
Finally Bloomberg reports China Manufacturing Data Show Risk of Deeper Slowdown on Exports. China’s manufacturing may shrink for a fourth month in February, indicating the world’s second- biggest economy remains vulnerable to a deeper slowdown, as Europe’s crisis caps exports and the housing market cools.