Covid rule 1: You shall not condone Sweden’s strategy or any other that doesn’t include lockdown

France is banning firms registered in offshore tax havens from its government coronavirus bailout, following similar bans in Denmark and Poland
Bill Bostock
3 hours ago
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire attends a news conference after the weekly cabinet meeting in Paris, France April 15, 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron announced extension to France's nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 disease until May 11. Michel Euler/Pool via REUTERS
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in Paris, France, on April 15, 2020. Michel Euler/Pool via REUTERS

France will block firms registered in tax havens from accessing the state bailout fund.
"If a company has its tax headquarters or subsidiaries in a tax haven, I want to say with great force, it will not be able to benefit from state financial aid," finance minister Bruno Le Maire told the France Info radio station on Thursday.
Last Saturday, Denmark had enforced a similar measure, following the lead of authorities in Poland in early April.
France has allocated 110 billion euros ($108 billion) to save its businesses amid the coronavirus crisis.
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France will block firms registered in offshore tax havens from claiming aid from its government coronavirus bailout, following similar moves by Denmark and Poland.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced Thursday that companies either registered, or controlling subsidiaries, in tax havens are ineligible for the 110 billion euros ($108 billion) rescue package.

"It goes without saying that if a company has its tax headquarters or subsidiaries in a tax haven, I want to say with great force, it will not be able to benefit from state financial aid," Le Maire told the France Info radio station.

"There are rules that must be followed. If you have benefited from the state treasury, you cannot pay dividends and you cannot buy back shares," he said.

"And if your head office is located in a tax haven, it is obvious that you cannot benefit from public support."
Emmanuel Macron
A TV screen in Paris shows French President Emmanuel Macron announcing new measures to fight the spread of the coronavirus on March 16, 2020. LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images

The announcement follows a request for an amendment to the 2020 finance bill from a group of Centrist Union group senators, led by Nathalie Goulet, on Monday.

The amendment sought to exclude "companies whose subsidiaries or establishments are established in states and non-cooperative territories" from getting aid. The amendment passed on Wednesday.

France is the third country to enforce such a measure amid the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus crisis.

On April 8, the prime minister of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, said that large companies wanting a chunk of his government's roughly $6 billion bailout fund must pay domestic business taxes.

"Let's end tax havens, which are the bane of modern economies," he said.

Denmark followed suit on Saturday. "Companies based on tax havens in accordance with EU guidelines cannot receive compensation," a statement from the country's finance ministry read.

Of France's 110 billion-euro package, four billion euros ($4.3 billion) have been reserved for struggling startups, while 20 billion euros ($21.7 billion) are being kept for larger firms, such as Air France.

This is absolutely right, I don't take a hard line view on tax avoidance however if a company has avoided paying tax then it shouldn't be going to the taxpayer when it runs into financial troubles. Hopefully these examples will be followed elsewhere!

There's the argument that they still hire people who pay their taxes in the country, but it makes some sense to me, why get money out if you never intend on putting it in.

I wonder how Ireland and the Netherlands feels now about the companies looking for help based there for a bit of the double Dutch Irish sandwich?

It'll be interesting/worrying to see how many companies fold from this economic crisis.

Companies folding create huge opportunities for others, far better that poor companies fail rather than suck up loads of Taxpayers money, they will need more support at the next hiccup.

Very simple actually:

The help towards companies is based on keeping national employment and knowledge so those shell companies don't get much if any. What for example an Ikea does with their employees or stores in Switzerland is not of any concern to the Dutch or the Irish.

That interview was April 17th.

Today, April 23th from Anders Wallensten epidemiologist at the Swedish Public Health agency via The Local in SE (https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/tim...oped-in-sweden)

"There have been 16,755 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Sweden so far, up from 16,004 the day before. The Public Health Agency's deputy state epidemiologist Anders Wallensten noted when presenting the figures at the agency's daily press conference at 2pm that it was a relatively large increase on the previous day. He said they were looking into why, but that we are not seeing a downturn."

2021 deaths or ~198 deaths per million. No need to put Norway or Finland numbers for comparison, they're already suffering https://experience.arcgis.com/experi...6f9f87457ed9aa

The immediate one that springs to mind is Virgin Atlantic.
Decent company, 35 years old, but @50% owned by US company Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines 10% beardie.

Now begging for £500,000,000 off UK PLC.

I don't know why UK Govt qould want to go on the hook for a generic long haul provider. I can see why Easyjet going would be a problem, also Ryanair, but Virgin would not be missed.

I thought Continental ceased to exist. Is it part of Delta?

The problem comes when they were previously state-run enterprises and are in trouble now yet are required for a nation's infrastructure.

Rail operators and airlines serving isolated communities are two examples.

Weren´t they bought/taken over by or merged with United?

I am wrong.


Virgin Atlantic is owned by the Virgin Group (20%), Air France-KLM (31%) and Delta Air Lines (49%).

Merged with United, but officially the parent company is United Continental Holdings.

Amusing description here:
https://www.flights.com/airlines/con...lines-flights/

They say 1 out of every 75 cases is confirmed in Stockholm county. That brings the total with 6681 confirmed cases and a population of 2.344.000 at: 21.37%

This is as usual with the Swedes total nonsense, just yesterday they scrapped another research which showed 11% but could not be used since the number was to high due to including the blood from people who got called in to donate blood for blood plasma since they already had the disease instead of using a random group.

So yesterday 11% after actual testing was proven to be to high, but today 21.37% should be accurate, I call again total bollocks on the Swedes.

I wonder what joke they'll tell tomorrow.

I don't think it is malicious, they are just doing their own thing. I wish them well. While we are busy worrying about care homes and paliative care units, they on top have neighborhoods where it is not, imho, even possible to expect adherence to rules, prevention or serious crisis management. I read somewhere that in some Swedish neighborhoods the idea of social distancing with families of 8 crammed in one room, is just not simply possible. Sounds that the road the country took wasn't deliberate but the only possible one? So I would feel for their situation, really..

__________________
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Back to CH, things are getting really good. Graph from the daily update of the OFSP/BAG. time to open the wine =)

We'll know in 1 or 2 years from now who has done the right thing. Perhaps the Swedes, perhaps not.

Become the quarantine star! www.balconystories.tv/en/home-2/

I wish them all the best, just like I wish us all the best. But they are so incredible inconsistent in their reporting. It feels like they (read politics/advisors) want to be correct and that they have no problem steering the calculations positively in their way and they want the amount of currently infected as high as possible. Wether it is tunnel vision or simply cheating I don't know but it is incorrect towards the own population, here we just simply say "we don't know the total amount of infected, but we hope soon to get results from researches" there with much less testing they everyday seem to know it and everyday it is a completely different number while trust in the government is so important now.

I couldn't send a package today out of CH. Limited transport capacity