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Lockheed Martin CEO tells Trump she'll work to drive down cost of F-35 (Business Insider/Reuters)12/30/2016 The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp told President-elect Donald Trump on Friday that she was committed to driving down the cost of the company's F-35 fighter jet, a day after Trump took aim at the cost of the F-35 in a Twitter post.
CEO Marillyn Hewson said she spoke with Trump on Friday afternoon and assured him that she had heard his message "loud and clear" about reducing the cost of the F-35. Trump, in a tweet posted late on Thursday, suggested that an older aircraft made by rival aerospace company Boeing Co could offer a cheaper alternative to the F-35. "Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!" Trump said. Hewson, in a statement posted on Twitter, said she had had "a very good conversation" with Trump on Friday. Trump had met with the chief executives of both Lockheed and Boeing on Wednesday. Boeing's F-18 is an older generation aircraft that lacks the stealth capabilities of the F-35. One U.S. official said it was impossible to tell what Trump meant by his tweet, given the importance of stealth technology as a way to counter advanced defenses of near-peer states, like Russia or China. "Somebody needs to ask Donald Trump how he's going to be able to confront China without aircraft capable of penetrating anti-access and area denial systems, including air defenses," the official said. Most defense analysts do not consider the two jets as comparable aircraft. "Impractical if not irrational," Richard Safran, a defense analyst at Buckingham Research, said by email. "First, the F/A-18 is a carrier-based naval fighter. Certainly it could not meet the U.S. Marine Corps need for vertical lift. It would not be suitable for the Air Force either - the extra weight of a carrier fighter makes it less than ideal for the Air Force." "Unless the rules of physics have changed, you cannot make a non-stealthy, two-engined, carrier-based aircraft from the 1980s into a single-engine, multi-role stealthy fighter from the 2000s," Vertical Research Partners analysts wrote in a note on Friday. Still, Trump's dissatisfaction with the program, which has been dogged by problems while costs have escalated to an estimated $379 billion, is a clear risk for Lockheed. The F-35 program is a critical sales generator for the company, accounting for 20 percent of last year's total revenue of $46.1 billion. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher said on Thursday in an email that the company was committed to providing the capability and affordability to meet national security needs. On Wednesday, Trump met the CEOs of Lockheed and Boeing at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg told reporters there that he had guaranteed costs would not get out of control for a replacement to Air Force One, the presidential plane, another project Trump calls too expensive. Trump told reporters he wanted to cut the F-35 program's costs. Trump's jockeying for leverage via his Twitter account is likely to be a hurdle for all U.S. defense contractors, Roman Schweizer, aerospace and defense analyst at Cowen & Co, wrote in a client note on Thursday. Trump unleashed his tirade about the hefty cost for U.S. aircraft earlier this month, first lashing out at Boeing over the cost of replacement Air Force One presidential planes and days later at Lockheed over the F-35. Since Trump's first tweet about Air Force One on Dec. 6, Lockheed shares have slumped around 6.4 percent, costing its shareholders collectively about $5 billion in lost market value. "We have no idea how this plays out but believe 'Twitter risk' for defense companies could be a significant issue over the next four years," Cowen's Schweizer wrote. "This is Lockheed Martin's time in the barrel." (Reporting by Phil Stewart and Eric Beech in Washington, Joe White in Detroit, Jeffrey Dastin in Los Angeles, and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Leslie Adler) Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter. Are you engaged in International trade where countries like the US, Syria, Cuba, North-Korea are directly or indirectly involved, or if your goods/services are of strategic importance (nuclear, weapons, knowledge)?
Then you could run a risk regarding International sanction laws and regulations. Embargoes and sanctions can take a number of forms, but the most relevant types of sanctions for businesses are financial sanctions and trade sanctions. Financial sanctions generally involve asset-freeze measures affecting the provision of funds and economic resources to certain entities or individuals ('designated persons'). They may also include restrictions on the use of assets by designated persons, receipt and transfers of funds to particular types of persons - for example, Syrian nationals - and prohibitions on the provision of financing or financial assistance connected to designated persons and prohibited transactions. Trade sanctions prohibit trade in certain goods from affected countries, usually arms and commodities such as oil, timber, gold and diamonds; and equipment for use in the nuclear, oil and gas or petrochemical sector. Activities related to such trade may be prohibited. It is also broadly prohibited to engage in any activities the object or effect of which is to circumvent sanctions. As a consequence, companies should not structure transactions to avoid international sanctions. For example, an EU based oil and gas business which supplied equipment to a company in the UAE, knowing that in turn the UAE company supplied that equipment to end users in a sanctioned country, may well have breached EU trade sanctions against that country. Breach of financial or trade sanctions law can result in the commission of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment, a very important financial punishment or both. We can support you to become aware of this risk and subsequently adjust your processes to identify the sanction risks and make sure it is managed in a proper way. Need further information? Looking for solutions? Contact us. Below is a list of key areas of economic and trade relations between Russia and Turkey:
TOURISM - In a decree signed by Putin charter flights from Russia to Turkey were banned and tour firms were told not to sell any holidays there. - Turkey's seaside resorts are among the most popular tourism destinations for Russians; for Turkey, Russia is the source of the second-largest number of tourist arrivals after Germany. - About 4.4 million Russians, including 3.3 million Russian tourists, visited Turkey in 2014. - Tour companies had expected that tourist flows would shift to Turkey after Moscow halted flights to resorts in Egypt following the downing of a passenger jet over the Sinai Peninsula. However, the Russian jet was shot down by the Turkish military shortly after the Egyptian incident. FOOD - Russia banned imports of vegetables, fruits and other agricultural products from Turkey. - Turkish food supplies to Russia had become more important after Moscow banned many Western food imports in 2014 in a tit-for-tat move following the imposition of European Union sanctions over Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. . Turkey's exports to Russia, mainly food and textiles, were worth $6 billion in 2014, according to an estimate by Renaissance Capital made last November. ENERGY AND COMMODITIES - Russia did not let the row with Ankara affect energy exports, the core of its economic relationship with Turkey. - Turkey is the second-largest buyer of Russian natural gas after Germany. Russia is Turkey's largest natural gas supplier, with Ankara buying 28-30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of its 50 bcm of natural gas needs annually from Russia. - Turkey is the largest buyer of Russian wheat and sunflower oil. It bought 4.1 million tonnes of Russian wheat in the previous marketing year, which ended on June 30. [GRA/RU] - Russia said last December it had no plans to impose any restrictions on exports of Russian grain to Turkey. PROJECTS - Turkey commissioned Russia's state-owned Rosatom in 2013 to build four 1,200-megawatt nuclear reactors in a project worth $20 billion. A source told Reuters in April a Turkish construction firm was in talks about buying up to 49 percent of the project. - Russia and Turkey also have the TurkStream pipeline project, an alternative to Russia's South Stream pipeline to transport gas to Europe without crossing Ukraine. The South Stream plan was dropped in 2014 due to objections from the European Commission. - Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in December that Moscow had suspended work on the TurkStream project. - Putin said this month that Russia had not "definitively" canceled TurkStream. (Reporting by Polina Devitt, Dmitry Solovyov and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Gareth Jones) Need further information? Looking for solutions? Contact us. Large public tender European Union for defense sector
Object: armed vehicles Budget: € 43 million Contact us for more information. The Belgian government has reached an important tax agreement today.
What is important? What do we know? Remark: the final texts have not been communicated at this time.
Contact us for more information. When starting a new Belgium company, you are able to benefit from numerous tax advantages.
Advantage 1: tax shelter. When transferring money to a newly established company (existing since less than 4 years), there is a tax deduction of 45% of the transferred cash. Not surprisingly, there are limitations and conditions: 1° the tax deduction is not allowed for the director of the company; 2° the total advantage is limited by the structure of the shareholding structure; 3° real estate and management companies are exempt; 4° payment in full of the shares is necessary. Advantage 2: lower rate for witholding tax. You can benefit from the lower witholding tax rate of 15% for dividend payout after 3 years. Keep in mind that for this advantage the condition of payment in full of the shares also applies. Contact us for more information. The arms industry with over 600 modernization projects is booming in Turkey. The government policies in manufacturing and new offset regulations towards to domestic procurement ensure continuous transformation and development. The 2023 vision of the government is to be ranked in first ten countries in defense industry and to manufacture all ground vehicles, marine vessels and unmanned aerial vehicles domestically.
Yesterday, the Belgian government announced a new defence contract tender, which involves 108 Rapid Reaction Vehicles (RRV), 8 modular protection kits, 60 removable rotating carriages equipped with a smoke grenade launcher system and an open multi-year contract for technical assistance.
The information which is known at this moment is as follows: - The investment aims at replacing the Iltis-jeeps which date from 1982; - The aim is to use the new vehicles for the new strategic force structure of the Belgian land armed forces, with a focus on Battle Groups; - The tender has two aspects: 1° purchase of vehicles and 2° service contract; - They are looking for a standard vehicle, which can equipped with protection kits and the necessary telecommunication equipment. The foreseen investment amounts to +/- 25 million euros (+/-28 USD dollars). Contact us for more information. |
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