Technology companies need to stop “extremely aggressive” tax planning, the man charged with reforming global tax rules has told the BBC. He says these “push the boundaries of what is legal”. Pascal Saint-Amans, who runs the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy, said that new standards would require companies to pay more tax in the countries where they sold goods or created revenues. He also said companies should not use tax havens to shelter their profits. Mr Saint-Amans’ intervention comes after years of complicated negotiations and endless summits on reforming the toxic issue of where large multi-national companies pay their taxes. He revealed that there should be international agreement on new tax laws ready for the G20 summit of global leaders in November. The implementation phase should then mean the rules are in place “well before” 2020. And, according to Mr Saint-Amans, that should mean technology companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google paying more tax in a number of countries. (BBC)
Consumers
Denmark considering cash-free shops
In Stockholm you can pay a street hawker with a credit card. In Copenhagen you can buy a single shot espresso with your smartphone. In Helsinki, you can go grocery shopping but leave your wallet at home. Scandinavia has long been the most cashless place on the planet. Now Denmark is considering whether to go a step further and allow retailers to ban cash altogether. The Danish Chamber of Commerce is recommending that shops and services be given the option of going completely cash-free. The proposal needs to be approved by parliament but if it gets the green light, retailers could begin rejecting cash from January 2016. “We’ve recognised what merchants have been telling us for some time now,” says Sofie Findling Andersen of the Chamber of Commerce. “Using cash is expensive, because it takes time for salaried employees to handle, and it’s also a security concern.” (Guardian)
Technology and Innovation
Recharge pools could help quench future California droughts
THE worst recorded drought in California’s history has forced state regulators to restrict people’s water use by a quarter. In the long-run, though, climate change and limited supply mean the state must radically change the way it manages water, particularly below ground. The state normally depends on winter storms to replenish its water. Most climate models suggest these storms will become less frequent but more intense, says Alexander Gershunov, a climatologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. So water will come in huge, sudden gushes, possibly bringing more than existing infrastructure can capture One option is to push water underground using recharge ponds or injection wells. Recharge ponds are constructed surface basins that allow water to collect and seep through the soil; injection wells use high-pressure pumps to actively push water down into aquifers. (New Scientist)
Solar road a great success
The world’s first solar road is generating more electricity than expected, engineers have confirmed, just six months after initial launch. Dutch engineers built the project in November last year as part of a three-year pilot. The 70 metre track between the Dutch suburbs of Krommenie and Wormerveer has embedded solar panels that transmit energy into either the national power grid and power streetlights. Engineers have confirmed that in the first six months of the three year pilot, the road has generated more than 3,000kwh, enough to sustain a house for a full year. Sten de Wit, spokesperson for SolaRoad said, “We did not expect a yield as high as this so quickly. If we translate this to an annual yield, we expect more than the 70kwh per square meter per year. We predicted [this] as an upper limit in the laboratory stage. We can therefore conclude that it was a successful first half year”. (Blue and Green Tomorrow)
Policy & Research
Early men and women were equal, say scientists
Our prehistoric forebears are often portrayed as spear-wielding savages, but the earliest human societies are likely to have been founded on enlightened egalitarian principles, according to scientists. A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.” Dyble says the latest findings suggest that equality between the sexes may have been a survival advantage and played an important role in shaping human society and evolution. (Guardian)
COMMENTS