Modern dairy production encourages breeding Holstein replacement heifers at about 407 days of age or 352 kg of weight.1 Though sexually mature, these animals are not full-grown. During first pregnancy, average
During the recent crisis we have observed how very liquid, highly rated financial assets all of a sudden became "toxic assets", how ratings for structured products had to be continuously downgraded, how several markets such as, e.g., the interbank market, broke down, and how banks faced severe liquidity and funding problems. Information problems were at the heart of many of these problems. The opacity of structured products, which was no issue in the boom, turned into a major drawback in the crisis; credit ratings were no longer trusted as providing reliable information about default risks; banks’ reported losses were viewed with suspicion by investors.
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the structure of the Hong Kong tax system on financial intermediation activities in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a major financial centre for investment and related activities in Asia. The vibrancy of its financial sector has been a significant contributor to economic growth and jobs, as most of its manufacturing industry has shifted to Mainland China. At the same time, other financial centres in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, have been growing in competition with Hong Kong. Thus, taxation of financial activities can have a significant impact on the growth and competitiveness of the Hong Kong economy.
Taxes are an important part of any modern economy as they help finance public goods and services. In this paper, we do not concern ourselves with the overall burden of taxation or with the expenditures made by governments with the tax revenues raised to finance them. Instead, we focus on the structure of taxes, but only in regard to the taxation of financial activity in Hong Kong.
