France Urges Tariff Barriers to Stop China From Killing Industry
Europe has already taken action on steel and automobiles, but rules must be changed to allow the wider use of measures against imports from China, Lombard said.
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Yahoo
8 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Which European countries have a wealth tax - and does it work?
As Sir Keir Starmer marks a year in Downing Street, a former Labour leader has suggested the prime minister should consider "asset taxes" for the wealthy as a way to regain support. Lord Neil Kinnock said that while the government is working towards "a series of really commendable and absolutely essential policies", they are "barely noticed" amid fury over cuts to the winter fuel payment, controversial welfare reforms and continuing with the two-child benefit cap. He said that a "cloud hangs over the accomplishments of the government... and people are not getting the message", with Labour trailing in the polls to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Kinnock told Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme that there are things the party could do that "would commend themselves to the great majority of the general public", including "asset taxes". "By going for an imposition of 2% on asset values above £10 million, say, which is a very big fortune, the government would be in a position to collect £10 billion or £11 billion," he said. Conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said he thought a wealth tax would be "the worst thing to do" and opposed the idea of "piling further taxes on the wealth creators". One common argument against wealth taxes is that they drive wealthy people to other countries, meaning less tax collected, but how true is this? Here, Yahoo News takes a look at other countries in Europe with forms of a wealth tax to see what the impact has been. Norway has a net wealth tax, which is defined by American non-profit the Tax Foundation as "taxes on an individual's or family's net assets levied on an annual basis". In 2023, the Guardian reported that a record number of super-rich Norwegians were leaving the country after the maximum wealth tax was increased to 1.1%. Ole Gjems-Onstad, a professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School, told the newspaper he estimated that those who left the country had a combined fortune of at least NOK 600bn (£43.6bn). In 2025, Alex Recouso, co-founder and chief executive of CitizenX, a private platform helping people find and fund places that will accept them as citizens, put the number at around £39.5bn. He told Australia's Daily Telegraph that this had resulted in a lost £435 million in yearly wealth tax revenue. Norway's municipal wealth tax rate is 0.525% and is calculated based on global assets exceeding a net threshold of NOK 1,760,000 (around £128,000) for single/not married taxpayers and NOK 3,520,000 (around £256,000) for spouses, according to PwC. The state wealth tax rate is 0.475% and is calculated based on assets exceeding a net capital tax basis of NOK 1,760,000 (around £128,035) for single/not married taxpayers and NOK 3,520,000 (around £256,000) for spouses. For net wealth in excess of NOK 20,700,000 (around £1.5 million), the rate is 0.575%. These levies combined brings the maximum wealth tax rate to 1.1%. While many rich Norwegians were reported to have moved to Switzerland, the Alpine country has a wealth tax system of its own. Its tax is levied annually at a regional level and accounts for around 3.8% of the state's annual income, according to the Financial Times. However, the newspaper points out that on the whole, tax in Switzerland is low, varying from canton-to-canton, with the top federal rate at just 11.5%. There is also no inheritance tax at a federal level, although some cantons have their own. This could explain why Switzerland has not had the same exodus of the super-rich as Norway. Spain taxes its residents on its worldwide assets valued at over €700,000 (around £604,000), according to Sublime Spain, a company that helps support people's work and life in the Mediterranean country. However, some autonomous regions including Catalonia have a lower level of €500,000, while some don't have any wealth tax. Percentages vary depending on how much you have in assets, but generally, the wealth tax in Spain is between 0.2% and 2.5%. Spain's central government also introduced a nationwide "solidarity wealth tax" in recent years, ranging from 1.7% to 3.5% on people with net assets exceeding €3 million (around £2.6 million). The Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group, holds up Spain as a shining example of how wealth taxes can work. It suggests that other countries can raise $2.1 trillion a year by following the example of Spain's "featherlight" wealth tax on the richest 0.5% of households. Using the Spanish structure as a model for its study, the group suggests a tax rate of 1.7% is applied on wealth above the 0.5% threshold; a rate of 2.1% is applied wealth above the 0.1% threshold; and a rate of 3.5% is applied to wealth above the 0.05% threshold. But how well has Spain's wealth tax worked? A review by the Tax Foundation found that in 2022, wealth taxes represented 0.19% of GDP in Spain, compared to 1.19% of Switzerland's. They accounted for 0.51% of the former's total tax revenues and 4.35% of the latter's. In 2023, the new solidarity tax was reported to have raised €632 million in the year, the Budget Ministry said, compared to €1.8 billion raised from all taxes on large fortunes. While these figures are not to be sniffed at, they are a small proportion of the £280.5 billion in total tax revenue raised by Spain that year, according to Ceic Data. Raise taxes or this government will fail, Rachel Reeves's former top adviser warns (The Independent) Another tantrum from the Labour backbenches is inevitable (Sky News) Starmer endorses UN's high-tax manifesto (The Telegraph)
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
German minister wants more firms eligible for electricity relief, FT says
BERLIN (Reuters) -German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche wants to make planned measures aimed at lowering companies' electricity costs more widely available than previously suggested, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people with knowledge of the plan. Earlier this year, Germany's ruling coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats agreed to cut electricity tax to the European minimum for all consumers. But the Finance Ministry's framework budget for 2026 introduced last month limited the planned relief to industry, agriculture and forestry, excluding many companies and consumers, citing financial difficulties. Reiche said last month Germany would present a concrete concept for an industrial electricity price before the summer break and aimed to implement it by the end of the year. The FT said Reiche wants to expand the number of companies eligible for what it called electricity price subsidies to 2,200 from 350. The paper added that the people it cited estimated the cost at 4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) and the measure would fund up to half of firms' electricity costs over three years. Asked for comment by Reuters, the Economy Ministry said in a statement that under newly announced European Union rules up to around 2,200 "energy- and trade-intensive" companies could receive aid to cover up to half their power costs. "The (German) concept is currently being worked on," it added, declining to elaborate. The FT quoted the ministry as saying its scheme would aim to deliver "swift and reliable" aid to the chemical, glass and plastics industries, which have "a far-reaching impact on other sectors through the value chains". ($1 = 0.8490 euros) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The strange reason holding up Mendy's move to PSV
Nobel Mendy's signing by PSV Eindhoven is hanging by a thread. According to several Dutch media outlets and confirmed by 'El Desmarque', Real Betis had agreed to sell him for 4 million euros, but there's a catch. Advertisement The player had agreed to the deal and everything seemed closed, but the agreement is on hold until PSV resolves several bureaucratic hurdles in the Netherlands. What's happening? Simply that to sign a non-EU player, the Dutch system requires international experience, and Mendy doesn't meet that requirement. The Senegalese player has never played for his national team and only has a few games in the top tier. PSV considers the regulation unfair but has put the transfer on hold for now. Betis, which was expecting to close this sale weeks ago, could lose the income and find itself with a player in preseason who they didn't count on. Advertisement This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here. 📸 Denis Doyle - 2025 Getty Images
