Zandi says Donald Trump’s fiscal policies would hurt the economy. Moody’s Analytics attempts to quantify the economic benefits and costs of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s stated proposals. Should they become law, Moody’s Mark Zandi and colleagues estimate that Trump’s tax and spending proposal would throw the US economy into recession starting in 2018. They projected three years of economic stagnation, an unemployment rate peaking at 7.3 percent and 10-year Treasury yields reaching 8.6 percent. The average American household’s income will stagnate, while stock prices would plunge and not return to current levels until 2021. The Trump campaign says the report is based on flawed assumptions.
Californians will likely vote on a cigarette tax hike in November. The statewide measure would add $2 in taxes on tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and vaping sales. The state hasn’t changed its cigarette tax of 87 cents per pack since 1998.
Germany moves to revise its inheritance tax law, in the nick of time. The government’s finance and economics ministers have finalized amendments to the country’s inheritance tax. They’d make it easier to exempt owners of companies with five or fewer employees from the tax, but inheritances worth more than $29 million would receive extra scrutiny before they’d become exempt. All inheritances of more than roughly $102 million would be taxable. The German parliament must first approve the amendments, but they could go into effect as early as July 1. In 2014, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that tax privileges were concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, and gave parliament until mid-2016 to amend the law.
A Serbian billionaire just got five years in prison for tax evasion. Miroslav Miskovic was one of Serbia’s most influential people, but a Serbian anti-graft court just found him guilty of using his road construction business to help his son avoid $3.4 million in taxes. The government cites the conviction in its ongoing effort to fight corruption--join the European Union. Miskovic’s attorney says the conviction proves that Serbia does not have an independent judiciary.
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