pendants supporters staged a general strike and blocked roads and commuter trains to protest the jailing of separatist leaders and activists. at. the e.u. is cracking down on tax avoiders or at least that's the plan speaking to d.w. the use finance commissioner says transparency is the key. and donald trump's finally going to get more space to vent twitter has abandoned its one hundred forty character limit and investments like. undone your winter and this is your business update there's fresh outrage over tax avoidance following the recent paradise papers leak e.u. commissioner. says member states can and will do much more to fight tax havens top priority is the creation of a blacklist to name and shame jurisdictions that cater to wealthy firms and individuals gets the e.u.

has been working for two years on similar measures with limited success consensus for maine's a challenge especially among members with low tax rates of their own i spoke to moscow v.c. asking him how he would define a tax haven. joining me now is the man him self he used commissioner for economic and financial affairs pia muscovy say good evening thank you very much for coming in you've said that the e.u. must seize the opportunity to make a credible blacklist of tax havens what counts as a tax haven. attacks even is a country which fulfills three criteria first a country which does not respect the global standards of governance of the set in what we call beds procedure from the u.s. you second a country would not have automatic exchange of information on who we are all simply on the personal accounts and third country which has

zero tax rate as far as corporate taxation is concerned lazier tax rate is a very high bog though and some would look to a you member at least for the moment no return as being don't know now you know member state is a tax even if you look at those criteria then you've got to examine that as. an object before yours was a british crown dependency with a zero percent you're talking about something different i'm talking about you if you talk about the u.k. country you know well the u.k. is not a tax even and the country on the country is very prominent. fighting dogs for the tax evasion but there are some crown dependencies all the territories which are associated to the crown or to the u.k. which are screen that will take another example the drizzy which is the isle of man i have designed. for your wall so for jack the

way it is tax to be out of man and i expect responses and if the responses are not satisfactory then we will have an estrangement procedure and this is also cream and taking the easy route to be a good worker is really good. the u.k. sounds like a fun this sounds like an excuse in order to not be tough with mistakes like britain imo although not point five percent tax rate is i don't really love don't be upset with u.k. i learned as a country was a low tax rate but there is suffering on tax rates but it's not zero it's twelve point five and when it's not respected which was the case it was up to then we consider that it is a state aid that's what my colleague margaret decided so coming back to the blacklist if we've got those criteria and they are severe enough much more severe than the o.e.c.d. quote syria. i have three messages first it must be delivered fast we must have this block list before the end of two thousand and seventeen it will be the first

time ever that we have a european belgrade second we need to have a credible blacklist of incredible blacklist as more obviously than one territory or non-corporeal jurisdictions all countries which are. following those criteria is considered a tax even must be listed and food you cannot have a credible list if you don't have credible sanctions appropriate sanctions and that's what we're working on yesterday that was the council in brussels we made good progress i think that with the paper scandal the ministers the governments feel that they need to deliver the commission is there push them to deliver the public opinion is there to push them to deliver the media here to what was a deliberate of them coming out in the midst of this commission president john paul younger has been remarkably quiet over the last few days and i put it to you that the commission has zero credibility to handle this issue of tax avoidance because

after all he the commission president is accused of encouraging tax avoidance when there was a prime minister of medicine that absolutely force this commission has done more on fighting back through the tax evasion than all the commissions in the previous twenty years did you employ you don't think you have waited minute it's not due to the fact that this or that personalities here due to the fact that we are in the new when the new area in you period which is a period of transparency i have proposed that i am the tax commissioner and i've got full trust of them could you i act in these names i have proposed eleven proposals directives among them six have been adopted which is not that easy if you consider what is the rule of unanimity inside the e.u. we have the best three thing ever for a commission chose to commissioners my colleague not going to myself who are really

i think a team which is dedicated to fighting that it take to of massive tax avoidance you know you can all say that in two thousand and three he encouraged the amazon to put its tax base in luxembourg i'm talking about the president of the commission. and dr you are president of the commission and this commission we are i can say that quietly but very confident keep the champions of fighting tax fraud and tax evasion we talked about this is a commission proposal i will mention two other proposals the one is the first one is that i think that the activity of those intermediaries legal advisers. fiscal advisors or banks it must be made transparent to the next administration and the third one is that we have already established a country by country reporting this is one of the six directives i mentioned but between tax administrations i would like it to become public i think there is no

a position between investment which we want to protect the value water environment c yes because transparency if you want to see is the only way to tackle with those phenomena if we can reach our goal but when you are addressing it when you're looking for how will this affect the average person in europe who is watching this right now if you do manage to get what you want and close these tax loopholes and blacklist these tax havens i think that what we are attending now with those parties papers which is a scandal but probably those practices are mostly legal but they are not moral this cannot be possible why because it exists only because it is even and certainly it is revealed if it is transparent if it is public it is not possible anymore you know all those people all those structures all those companies all those states which today named and shamed after the brothers' paper if their activity would be

immediately made public then they would be much much more for that's why transparency is the massive destruction weapon against tax evasion against tax aggressive tax planning. and that's why this commission is so so strong on for the younger commission right and you mentioned the threat to the potential threat of sanctions what are we talking about here are we talking about fines directly for a few who try and squirrel away their money in tax havens of a role it's ok because unless there's a significant legal threat they're going to continue to say tax avoidance is a misdemeanor we're not talking about firms we're talking about states when you have a blacklist of folks even you're talking about the states or territories we've mentioned some of them getting to the ground of their own those states will be which will be used to denote that we will have a very. strong list strong by pleased the sanctions must be linked to

our own capacity to their own linkage with the union i would mention for example well create deals or multilateral or bilateral agreements that we have got with them that can be suspended but the best thing should the strongest tension is the name and shame ok relieve me nobody nobody will like to be there that was e.u. commissioner pierre moscovici talking to me. twitter is doubling its limit of one hundred forty characters per tweet to two hundred eighty donald trump must be thrilled and many investors really are they think more characters means more money or rather any money because so far twitter has struggled to make a profit jack dorsey c.e.o. of twitter tweeted a statement reminiscent of neil armstrong's famous moon landing quote dorsey wrote

it's a small change but a big move for us doubling the length of tweets really is the biggest change in the company's history twitter went public in late two thousand and thirteen back then analysts hoped twitter would be another facebook but in contrast to facebook twitter has never found firm financial footing. the result since its i.p.o. in late two thousand and thirteen twitter shares have fallen from forty six us dollars at the debut to around twenty dollars now the problem the number of people who logged on to twitter was flat for years in the us so far the company has dealt with that problem by ringing more revenue out of the same number of people by selling better targeted ads but since this summer the number of people logging on has decreased in the u.s. and other markets twitter hopes that expanding its character count will attract more users to the service but twitter's new strategy can be explained in less than the original one hundred forty characters more words more users more money.

and it's time for us to. wraps up another business update but speaking of twitter you can check out business on that too you can also catch me on twitter at winter because i'll be taking full advantage of that new card to limit i'll be back with more tomorrow same time same place for me on the business team and by then thanks to watch.

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