Hello Maurice, <<Where's the best place for my stash now? ... have a good look first.>>
Yes, take a look at Zimbabwe and its platinum, recognized all over the world, highly liquid, and fungible as well, just like the USD, and so much simpler than the Q-currency.
There is much that Zimbabwe have to learn from the US. Like, just today, I ran across this method whereby inflation can be raise, productivity lowered, international capital driven off, taxes raised, and employment lowered, all at the same stroke of the pen. This is a good follow-up step to steel tariffs and such, and generally very bullish:
news.ft.com
Overseas companies face huge US tax bills
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: June 28 2002 20:37 | Last Updated: June 28 2002 20:37
Plans to force overseas-owned companies with American subsidiaries to pay billions of dollars in additional tax have been drawn up in the US in the hope of legislation being passed next month.
The move is in response to a World Trade Organisation ruling this year - following a European Union complaint - that the US must end a $4bn tax break for its exporters.
Bill Thomas, chairman of the House of Representatives ways and means committee, responsible for tax laws, said on Friday he wanted to end the tax advantages of overseas companies such as Daimler-Chrysler.
An array of benefits would go. The biggest is the "earnings stripping" provision allowing American subsidiaries to deduct from their US taxable income most interest payments to an overseas parent.
Corporate taxes on overseas companies would increase by an estimated $25bn-$50bn over 10 years.
Similar proposals have been endorsed by the Bush administration. The plans' prospects in the Democratic-controlled Senate are uncertain, but the Senate finance committee recently passed some tax legislation that overlaps with other elements of the Thomas bill.
The EU claimed in the WTO case that the so-called foreign sales corporation scheme was an unfair subsidy to US companies. The US could face punitive trade sanctions from the EU this year if the scheme is not dismantled.
European companies, the biggest foreign investors in the US, would be hit hardest by the Thomas plan.
Mr Thomas said he did not want to discourage overseas companies from investing in the US but "we just don't want them coming into this country with an advantage over US-owned companies". His proposal would "create a tax system which does not punish being a US-owned company".
In addition to raising taxes on overseas companies, the plan offers an array of tax breaks to US companies to offset the loss of the FSC scheme.
These include a more favourable allocation of interest expenses and an end to rules that force some US companies to pay taxes on overseas earnings before the profits are repatriated to the US.
The Senate finance committee has approved a bill to bar US companies from relocating in offshore tax havens such as Bermuda to gain tax benefits. House Democrats are demanding a floor vote on a similar bill.
But Mr Thomas said such a narrow approach would not tackle the underlying tax disadvantages faced by US-owned companies that lead some to seek tax homes abroad. |
