Can Young People Save Japan? Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes. Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries. “It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”
The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Countless Companies. Bill Gates: 'We can wipe out malaria' In The Playroom on the Behance Network. Meet the American-Led Mercenaries Protecting the U.A.E. from Protestors. The end of Berlusconi? - Inside Story. Martelly: Haiti's second great disaster. No sooner had Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly been confirmed the winner in Haiti's deeply flawed presidential election than he jumped on a plane and headed to Washington, where he met with his country's real power brokers: officials from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the US Chamber of Commerce and the State Department.
There, he committed his desperately poor country - where some 700,000 people are still homeless as a result of last year's earthquake - to fiscal discipline, promising to "give new life to the business sector". In exchange, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave him a strong endorsement. "We are behind him; we have a great deal of enthusiasm," she said.
Chinese selling chemical weapons equipment to Iran. » The Revolution Will Not Be Polite: The Issue of Nice versus Good Social Justice League. A while ago, tumblr user “iamateenagefeminist” compiled a list of non-oppressive insults , a public service that will never be forgotten.
The people of tumblr wept with joy and appreciation (although it should be noted that the people of tumblr will literally weep over a drawing of an owl). The list is not perfect, and “ugly” should NOT be on there as it reinforces beauty hierarchies. Still, I was happy to find it, because I am always looking for more insults that don’t reinforce oppressive social structures. What I Didn't Find in Africa. By Joseph C.
Wilson 4thPublished: July 6, 2003 Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador.
In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report.
Japanese government aide quits over nuclear crisis - Asia, World. Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the University of Tokyo's graduate school and an expert on radiation exposure, announced late yesterday that he was stepping down as a government adviser.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan appointed Prof Kosako after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami which struck north-eastern Japan on March 11. The disaster left 26,000 people dead or missing and damaged several reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant - triggering the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. In a tearful news conference, Prof Kosako said he could not stay and allow the government to set what he called improper radiation limits of 20 millisieverts an hour for elementary schools in areas near the plant.
Ruling Conservatives in landslide Canada win - Americas. Canada's ruling Conservatives have won a crushing victory in federal elections, handing prime minister Stephen Harper a coveted majority that eluded him in the last three elections.
Provisional results showed the Conservatives had 166 seats in parliament, well above the 155 they needed to transform their minority government into a majority. They won 40 per cent of the vote, more than most pollsters had expected. "Canadian politics has changed dramatically tonight," Jason Kenney, immigration minister in the last Conservative government, said a day after Monday's vote. "Canadians have gotten what they want; a stable majority which will focus on governing and economic growth and responsible fiscal policy. "