Mexico lines up tax reform with leftist lean: President Enrique Peña Nieto raises income tax but not VAT in latest shake-up Plan aims to broaden the abysmally low tax base and root out corruption in public spending

Mexico lines up tax reform with leftist lean: President Enrique Peña Nieto raises income tax but not VAT in latest shake-up Plan aims to broaden the abysmally low tax base and root out corruption in public spending
Mexico president Enrique Peña Nieto has unveiled a major shake-up of the country’s creaking tax system aimed at broadening the abysmally low tax base and rooting out widespread corruption in public spending. The plan would raise the top tax band from 30 per cent to 32 per cent for those earning more than 500,000 pesos (£24,000) a year, and see a new levy on stock market profits as well as the scrapping of more than half the exemptions and breaks in Mexico’s fiscal code. It has also defied widespread predictions by avoiding slapping…Read more …

Latin America most dangerous place for environmentalists Green campaigners are being killed in Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru, the UN says.

Latin America most dangerous place for environmentalists Green campaigners are being killed in Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru, the UN says.
As anti-mining activist Cleofe Neyra talks about the repeated death threats from anonymous callers to her cellphone, it is hard to imagine she may actually be one of the lucky ones. “They said they would be waiting for me, that they would rape and kill me,” Neyra, a 53-year-old smallholder farmer from Huancabamba, in Peru’s northern region of Piura, told GlobalPost. “It was traumatic, of course. You think the worst. You think about your family, your husband and your kids. You have to stay strong but it is very difficult to avoid letting…Read more …