Tax

• India plans to retain its import tax rate of 5% for certain types of batteries, including batteries for electric vehicles, until 2022, but will increase it to 15% thereafter to promote local manufacturing.
• The EU should advance with plans to impose a digital tax on technology companies in the first quarter of 2021 if efforts to find an international agreement fail.
• The UK Government, alongside the EU, Japan and the US implement various carbon tax schemes, including border taxes aimed at ensuring that emissions are brought down to a level that aims to keep global warming below 2 °C by 2100.
• In 2020, the Japanese government began offering tax incentives to incentivize network service providers to invest in secure 5G infrastructure and mitigate supply-chain risks.
• The Line 3 Replacement Project in Minnesota is projected to add $35 million per year in new tax revenue, $2 billion in economic activity, $162 million in local construction spending and 8,600 jobs.
• Projects in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania could potentially bring more than $3.5 billion in economic activity, 17,000 jobs and over $50 million a year in tax revenues.
• There is a pretty good chance that a carbon tax will be instituted in the United States, starting in 2022, leading to lower LNG out of the United States to international markets initially.
• Moody's Analytics is projecting $500 billion in US spending cuts and/or tax increases by state and local governments through fiscal year 2022.
• With increased expenditures and decreased tax revenues, the debt owed by the US federal government is expected to exceed the GDP of the US in 2021.
• The implementation of the EU's single-use plastic directive is still intact, although at a country level Italy has delayed its new plastic tax until 2021 and the UK has extended the consultation period for its packaging tax.
• US Tax Foundation surveyed current forecasts for a dozen states, and found that tax revenues are expected to fall about 4% in fiscal 2020 and 7% in fiscal 2021 from the fiscal 2019 peak.
• IBM has warned the Trump administration over potential retaliation against digital taxes, saying that if the US imposes tariffs on countries with policies designed to make internet companies pay more tax outside the US, it would damage the American economy.
• The Commission is again looking at the idea of establishing a Digital Services Tax as a means to chart its recovery from the coronavirus crisis, which it believes could generate up to €1.3 billion per year for the EU budget.
• Taxing individuals with fortunes over $1 million (£785,000) to pay between 2 to 3.5% tax depending on their net wealth in 2020, would allow Latin American governments to raise up to $14.2 billion (£11.6bn) in tax revenue, which could be spent on healthcare and social safety nets.
• Continuing with the Digital Tax, French President Emmanuel Macron told French TV that he envisages an EU-wide digital tax on big tech multinationals, along the lines of a digital tax, which France plans to impose in 2020.
• If policies including the UK's plastic tax in 2022 are implemented well, that would drive £10 billion' worth of new recycling facilities in the UK by 2030.
• Tax revenues are expected to further decline in FY2020 - 2021 due to the reduction in a number of taxes to stimulate economic activity, support tourism, restore consumer and business confidence and revive domestic demand.
• Canada's government has implemented or proposed a number of policies, from carbon taxes to regulations, to hit its target: a cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030.
• Other Chinese automakers are counting on support from the government, too, including tax breaks and an extension to 2022 of subsidies, originally scheduled to end this year, to make EVs more affordable.
• The combination of economic contraction, large government welfare payments and falling tax revenues, will see UK national debt rise very significantly.
• A key action would be adopting a federal standard to reach 55% carbon-free electricity by 2025, 75% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2045, as well as extending investment and production tax credits for clean energy resources and tying them to battery storage as well.
• Even if employment rebounds by the end of this year and payroll taxes return to near-normal levels, the shock from the pandemic shutdown could accelerate the depletion of the Social Security trust fund by about six months..

Last updated: 04 October 2020