Security Scare
Police evacuated passengers from a major railway station in Madrid and from two high-speed trains in Barcelona this morning following security alerts that proved to be false alarms.
Regional police in Catalonia ordered passengers off two high-speed trains at Barcelona’s Sants station at around 8 am and bomb disposal units carried out an investigation after security scanners detected a suspicious package inside a suitcase. Two hours later, National Police in Madrid ordered the full evacuation of the city’s Atocha station.
Stamp Duty
In a controversial decision the supreme court has reversed a recent ruling, ensuring that home buyers and not banks pay a mortgage tax.
The court had ruled last month that banks were liable to pay the tax rather than their clients, who had paid it until then, triggering substantial losses for lenders on the stock market.
Spain’s IBEX 35 jumped around 1.8% this morning as bank stocks surged after the decision.
Traffic Rules
SPEED limits on secondary roads will drop from 100 kilometres per hour to 90 from January as part of a raft of measures to cut deaths.
The DGT reports that only around two in 10 fatal accidents happen on motorways, with the rest being on back roads, in built-up areas and on secondary highways.
from January 2 cars and motorbikes will have to stick to 90 kilometres per hour or less on ‘B- roads’, and vans, lorries, buses and coaches to 80.
Corporate Tax
A European Union plan to tax big internet firms like Google and Facebook on their turnover was on the verge of collapsing yesterday after several EU governments rejected it and announced national initiatives instead.
Under a proposal from the EU’s executive Commission in March, EU states would charge a 3 percent levy on the digital revenues of large firms that are accused of averting tax by routing their profits to the bloc’s low-tax states.
The plan is aimed at changing tax rules that have let some of the world’s biggest companies pay unusually low rates of corporate tax on their earnings.
But it requires the support of all 28 EU states and is opposed by a number of them
Spain and Britain have announced their own national plans to tax digital companies, and reiterated their intention to move ahead without waiting for an EU deal.