Online retailer Amazon has announced another move into a traditional brick and mortar business, drive-up grocery stores.

The company announced the AmazonFresh Pickup service Tuesday, according to CNBC. The service, which is currently only available to Amazon employees, would allow Amazon Prime members to order groceries online, choose a pick up time and pick them up at that store.

The service would allow customers to select fruits, vegetables, breads, dairy and meats among other items. Pick up times can be made as soon as within 15 minutes of placing an order.

Amazon also offers a grocery delivery service to certain parts of the United States.

AmazonFresh Pickup is the latest move for the company, which is also reportedly considering furniture and home appliance showrooms, according to the New York Times.

The company is also experimenting with convenience stores without cashiers.

 
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Indonesia has the world’s fourth-largest population at almost 260 million, but only 10 percent are registered as taxpayers and only about one million actually submit a tax return. That’s a major reason for the country’s huge and growing deficit, which has stalled the present administration’s ambitious infrastructure plans.

To jump-start the recovery of assets that wealthy Indonesians sequester abroad, the country launched a tax amnesty program in the summer of 2016. It was an experiment that drew criticism from the likes of OECD, the IMF, and domestic labor unions. Still, as it enters the final days of its nine months, the program has exceeded monetary expectations, netting about $330 billion of tax revenue.

The big question, once it wraps up on March 31, is what to do with that money. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani has created a task force to address the repatriated assets, but they can only really start their work after the final numbers are released. The government must also respond to criticism that the amnesty program lets off tax evaders too easily, to the detriment of the working class.

Closing the deficit

“The revenue from this will significantly contribute to reducing the national deficit,” said Asmiati Malik, an economics researcher at the University of Birmingham. “It could do so by as much as 70 percent: from $23 billion to $8.2 billion.”

In recent weeks, regional tax offices have put on daily public campaigns to encourage participation in the amnesty program. Hestu Yoga Saksama of the Taxation Directorate General told the Jakarta Post as many as 4,000 people signed up for it every day in March that as many as 4,000 people signed up for it every day in March, suggesting it arose from a general tendency to procrastinate on personal finances.

“In our culture, people tend to wait until the very last moment,” said Yoga.

Over three million Indonesians have become new tax payers in the last year, according to the Directorate General of Taxation. This includes high profile business people like those of the Indonesian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a business lobby, who signed up en masse earlier this year.

Since the 1990s, when there were ethnic riots and political unrest before and after the fall of long-time dictator Suharto, rich Indonesians have relocated money to tax havens like Singapore, according to Bloomberg.

“Two huge benefits of the amnesty program for taxpayers now are the low interest rate and the abolition of tax debt,” said Yustinus Prastowo of the Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis.

If they repatriate assets, individuals will be charged between two and ten percent interest, rather than typical corporate or personal income tax rates, which can reach 30 percent. And they must commit to keeping those assets within Indonesia for at least three years.

Expanding the tax base

Indonesia has already generated more revenue from its tax amnesty experiment than analogous efforts in countries like India and Germany, but according to some experts, there remains room for expansion.

“The major issue is that the number of taxpayers who joined the amnesty program is still low, proportionally,” said Malik. “There are roughly 700,000 people who joined the program out of a total 32 million taxpayers… which is only 2.2 percent of those eligible.”

Malik called for a more progressive tax policy to increase participation in both the amnesty program and taxation in general. “It should be more progressive regarding extensification [widening the tax base], and increase the incentive for tax compliance and avoidance,” she said. “These solutions hinge on using ‘one-gate identification’ that integrates a person’s bank account, national ID, and tax ID, so that no one can avoid declaring their assets.”

That being said, the first round of the amnesty program is well-timed; by September of this year, Indonesia will join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Automatic Exchange of Information initiative to share its tax figures internationally. That means it will be able to access the details of Indonesian citizens’ offshore assets in countries like Singapore and the Cayman Islands.

Rising inequality

The OECD, however, was an early critic of Indonesia’s project of tax amnesty. Programs like this are “unlikely to deliver benefits that exceed their true costs, but carry a risk of leading to an erosion of the gross revenue collected and may negatively affect overall tax compliance,” Philip Kerfs, of OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, told Bloomberg in August 2016.

Opponents of the program argue that tax evaders are essentially rewarded for flouting the law.

Last fall, there were large worker protests in Jakarta against tax amnesty, and most of the country’s labor unions have vocally opposed the policy.

The International Monetary Fund also expressed doubts about the program. “We were a little skeptical with the implementation of tax amnesty anywhere, but we hope we are wrong in Indonesia,” said IMF’s Luis Bereu.

On Monday, the Directorate General of Taxation announced it was devoting “special attention” to pursuing several members of a Forbes list of the richest Indonesians who have not yet registered for tax amnesty.

 

 

Prastowo suggested another reason why the funds may eventually fall short of their potential — the hardline rallies that gripped Jakarta last November and December, against the city’s Chinese Christian governor. The political disturbance, he said, may have deterred investors from bringing their money back home. It’s a remarkable parallel to the unrest that sent many wealthy Indonesians packing in the first place.
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Turkish and Gulf airlines are touting free WiFi and better in-flight connectivity for smartphones as they scramble to mitigate the impact of a ban on laptops in plane cabins bound for the United States.

The restrictions could deal a blow to fast-growing Gulf airlines, which depend on business-class flyers stopping over in Dubai or Doha for far-flung destinations, and to Turkish Airlines with its high volume of transit passengers.

A Turkish Airlines official said it was working on rolling out a system to allow passengers to use 3G data roaming on mobile phones to connect to the internet in-flight, and planned to make WiFi freely available on some aircraft from next month.

“We’ve sped up infrastructure work after the latest developments. … If the work is complete, we’re planning on switching to free WiFi services in our Boeing 777 and Airbus 330 aircraft in April,” the official told Reuters.

Emirates said Thursday it was introducing a “laptop and tablet handling service” for U.S.-bound flights which would allow passengers to use their devices until just before they board. The devices would be “carefully packed into boxes” and returned on arrival in the United States, it said.

Emirates passengers can access limited free WiFi or pay $1 for 500 MB.

Fellow Gulf carrier Etihad encouraged passengers to pack their electronics in check-in luggage but said it would also allow devices to be handed over at boarding, a spokesman said. Turkish said it had introduced a similar measure.

Qatar Airways did not respond to questions on how it planned to mitigate the impact of the new security measures, but in a Facebook posting this week it said its in-flight entertainment was “the only entertainment you’ll need on board.”

Royal Jordanian also took a tongue-in-cheek approach, listing on Twitter “12 things to do on a 12-hour flight with no laptop or tablet,” including reading, meditating, saying hello to your neighbor, or “reclaiming territory on your armrest.”
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In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell for the eight consecutive day on Monday.  Investors may have been discouraged by the failure of U.S. President Donald Trump to pass big changes to the health care insurance system that he promised during the campaign.

U.S. stock indexes were down sharply in morning trading, but by Monday’s close, the S&P 500 was off just one-tenth of a percent, with the Dow down two-tenths.  The NASDAQ posted a slight gain.

U.S. and other stocks had been mostly rising since the November election on business hopes that promised cuts in taxes and regulation and a boost in spending on public works would stimulate the economy and boost profits.

Now investors are worried that the inability of the Republican president to get support from his Republican-controlled Congress means he will struggle to deliver promised changes on other complex and controversial efforts.

Later this week, government officials will report new data on growth of the U.S. economy and the health of the job market.
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Transnational crime, or crimes committed across international borders, is growing at a faster pace than many realize, partly because the international community is not paying a lot of attention to it. That’s the conclusion from Global Financial Integrity or GFI, a non-profit Washington think tank that tracks illicit financial flows across borders.

The group’s latest findings estimate that transnational crime is worth between $1.6 to $2.2 trillion per year. GFI says the lion’s share of illicitly generated funds around the globe comes from counterfeiting, worth between $923 billion to $1.13 trillion per year, followed by drug trafficking which generates between $426 to $652 billion in illegal funds annually.

“Transnational crime is a business, and business is very good,” said Channing May, author of GFI’s “Transnational Crime and the Developing World.”  Less understood, said May, are the lasting and negative consequences for governments and the economies of developing countries.  

“Very rarely do the revenues from transnational crime have any long-term benefit to citizens, communities or economies of developing countries. Instead, the crimes undermine local and national economies, destroy the environment and jeopardize the health and well-being of the public,” said May.

Rounding out the top 10

Of the top 10 illegal revenue generators around the globe, human trafficking is ranked in fourth place, generating roughly $150 billion per year, followed by illegal mining, worth upwards of $48 billion. In eighth place, crude oil theft is valued between $5 to $12 billion, and in 10th place, the trafficking of human organs may be worth as much as $1.7 billion per year.

The report says shutting down the global shadow financial system that facilitates the movement and transfer of illicitly generated funds is technically not a difficult undertaking, but rather a matter of political will.

Complete report due March 29

GFI program manager Christine Clough said recommendations include greater financial transparency and regulations requiring all corporations to declare the nature and the ultimate beneficiaries of doing business within countries.

“Networks involved in these illicit markets are akin to major global corporations: they need access to finance and banking to be profitable to continue operating,” said Clough.

The complete GFI report will be released March 29 in Washington and is based on a compilation of statistics from various government and non-governmental bodies and law enforcement sources.
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The globally popular statue of a young girl will keep staring down Wall Street’s famed “Charging Bull” through February 2018 instead of being removed this coming Sunday, the mayor said.

She’s “standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what’s right,” said Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who appeared with the “Fearless Girl” statue Monday on the lower Manhattan traffic island where the two bronze figures face each other.

The mayor said the political turmoil surrounding Republican President Donald Trump makes the endearing child particularly relevant.

“She is inspiring everyone at a moment when we need inspiration,” he said.

The 4-foot-tall, 250-pound ponytailed girl in a windblown dress was installed this month to highlight the dearth of women on corporate boards as she stands strong against the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull. The girl became an instant tourist draw and internet sensation.

On Monday morning, Democratic U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, of New York, led a group of prominent women in front of City Hall to honor the artist, Kristen Visbal, and State Street Global Advisors, the asset management firm that commissioned the work and, with the McCann advertising firm, helped Visbal create her sculpture.

“She was created to bring attention to the courage and unrealized power of women in so many fields, and she has clearly struck a nerve,” said Maloney, who is pushing for the statue to become a permanent installation.

Visbal said the positive response to her artwork “renewed my faith in sculpture to make an impact on society, to create a debate the way a good piece of art should.”

She has received more than 1,000 emails from India, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and elsewhere, including one from a mother who wanted to wallpaper her daughter’s room with the girl’s image.

“I see men and women as the ying and yang of society,” Visbal said. “They bring different things to the table. They solve problems in a different way. But we need to work together.”

“Fearless Girl” will stay in place for another 11 months through an art program of the city’s Department of Transportation that manages lower Broadway near Wall Street.

Visbal said one of her models was a friend’s young daughter, whom she asked “to envision staring down a great big bull and, boy, she really had style.” The girl was white, and the creative team then incorporated another girl, a Latina, “to come up with a child that has universal appeal,” Visbal said.

The fictional figure is linked to a very real message: Women make up only about 16 percent of U.S. corporate boards, according to the ISS Analytics business research firm.

Artist Arturo Di Modica’s bull arrived after the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit. He wants the girl gone, calling the statue an “advertising trick” fashioned by two corporate giants, while his sculpture is “art.”
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President Donald Trump says that empowering and promoting women in business are priorities in his administration.

 

In a round-table discussion, the president is telling a group of female business owners that his team will work on barriers women face. He says the administration is also trying to make childcare more affordable and accessible.

 

WATCH: Trump’s comments during roundtable discussion

The gathering comes on the first work day since the Republican-led plan to repeal and replace the nation’s health care law was pulled before a House vote, a major setback for the Trump administration.

 

The White House is trying to focus this week on another campaign priority: creating jobs and economic issues.
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The Associated Press used dozens of interviews and multiple public records requests to determine that North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” will cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.

This is how the largest elements were compiled and used:

 

PAYPAL

 

A state Commerce Department analysis shows officials expected a planned Charlotte PayPal operations center to contribute more than $200 million annually to the state’s gross domestic product — an overall measure of the economy. By the end of 2028, the state expected PayPal to have added more than $2.66 billion overall to the state economy, according to the March 2, 2016, analysis.

 

But shortly after House Bill 2 was enacted, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman announced the company was backing out of the 400-job plan because of the law.

 

The fiscal cost-benefit analysis model has been used for more than a decade when the state offers major discretionary tax breaks to attract jobs. The Job Development Investment Grant program can provide incentives for up to 12 years under state law — so the analyses are often done for that length of time. A recent annual report on the incentive program shows it’s not uncommon for the state to estimate that a company could add billions to the economy over the grant’s life.

 

DEUTSCHE BANK

 

Using the same model, the Commerce Department estimated that a Deutsche Bank project in Cary would pump about $47 million annually into the economy once fully staffed at 250 jobs in 2017. The September 2015 analysis predicted a total impact of about $543 million by the end of 2027. But the company announced it was halting plans because of the law.

 

COSTAR

 

The AP used figures from North Carolina and Virginia to conclude that CoStar’s decision not to put its facility in Charlotte will cost North Carolina at least $250 million.

 

When CoStar announced in October 2016 that it had picked Virginia for a research center employing 732 people, that state said the project’s economic impact would be $250 million based on payroll, capital investments and other factors. That number is consistent with planning documents from North Carolina that projected the company to bring the same number of jobs _ average salary, around $57,000. State economic planners expected a capital investment of $24 million, so its impact would’ve exceeded $250 million in the first half-dozen years.

 

Officials said they didn’t run the wider-ranging 12-year analysis that was used for Deutsche Bank and Paypal.

 

CoStar’s CEO had recommended Charlotte to his board and was preparing for final negotiations for a site there when the board backed out because of negative publicity over the law, according to a September 2016 email exchange between Charlotte Chamber of Commerce and city officials.

 

VOXPRO

 

The AP analysis valued Voxpro’s decision not to come to the state at about $52 million based on figures from North Carolina and an interview with the CEO.

 

The company was in negotiations to bring hundreds of call-center jobs to the Raleigh area, but chose not to because of the law, founder and CEO Dan Kiely said in an interview. The company chose Athens, Georgia; Kiely said the company will employ 500 there.

 

North Carolina’s Commerce Department projected annual wages around $29,000 for 2016-20. The project was expected to create 230 jobs in the last quarter of 2016, according to state documents. The AP used 230 jobs over three months for its 2016 calculations, and the same headcount for 2017.

 

Kiely said the company would have ramped up hiring in 2017 to bring 500 jobs to the North Carolina site. The AP used the 500-job figure for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020; that’s consistent with the company’s expectation for staffing to reach 500 workers at the Georgia site before 2020.

 

North Carolina officials said they didn’t run the wider-ranging, 12-year analysis that was used for Deutsche Bank and Paypal.

 

ADIDAS

 

The AP used figures from North Carolina and Georgia to compute a value of about $67 million for the decision by Adidas not to choose North Carolina for a factory.

 

The shoe and apparel company was considering a High Point site and visited about a week before the law passed, according to state economic development emails. They show that soon after the law passed, a top Adidas executive sought a meeting with Commerce Secretary John Skvarla to discuss the law’s implications. By late June, North Carolina Economic Development Partnership recruiter Evan Stone bemoaned that the company’s “site location decision is imminent, and High Point was the preferred site but is being rejected solely on the basis of recent legislation.”

 

The AP calculation started with North Carolina officials’ estimate that Adidas would’ve made a capital investment of $35 million, according to emails. To estimate yearly payroll, the AP used the 160 jobs it’s bringing to Georgia with an average salary of about $40,000. That payroll number was multiplied by five years _ a time period commonly used for projections during early rounds of negotiations with state officials.

 

North Carolina officials said they didn’t run the wider-ranging 12-year analysis that was used for Deutsche Bank and PayPal.

 

SPORTS, CONVENTIONS, CONCERTS

 

The AP conducted more than a dozen interviews and email exchanges with tourism officials and planners to determine the state lost more than $196 million from sporting events, conventions, concerts and other events. Cities researched include: Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, Manteo, Wilmington, Durham and Fayetteville.

 
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U.S. economic growth is expected to accelerate this year and next, yet remain modest, even if President Trump’s promised tax cuts and infrastructure spending are implemented, a survey found.

The economy will grow a solid 2.3 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2018, according to 50 economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics. Those rates would be up from 2016’s anemic pace of 1.6 percent.

Still, those rates are below the 3 percent to 4 percent growth that Trump has promised to bring about through steep corporate and individual tax cuts and more spending on roads, airports and tunnels.

Most of the economists surveyed assume that a tax reform package will be approved by Congress this year. About two-fifths expect an infrastructure spending proposal to pass this year, while rest forecast it will happen in 2018 or beyond.

The survey also found that 70 percent of economists think financial markets are too optimistic about the impact of Trump’s proposals, should they be enacted.

The S&P 500 stock index has risen about 6.5 percent since the presidential election on anticipation of faster growth stemming from Trump’s policies. Shares slipped last week as Congress and the Trump administration failed to agree on a health care proposal to replace the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.

The economists surveyed work for companies, trade associations and in academia. The results were compiled by Timothy Gill, an economist at the American Iron and Steel Institute; Steve Cochrane, an economist at Moody’s Analytics; and David Teolis at General Motors, among others.

The survey found economists more optimistic about hiring than they were in a previous survey, conducted in December. They now forecast employers will add an average of 183,000 jobs a month this year, up from their earlier forecast of 168,000. The new figure is roughly in line with last year’s average of 187,000.

Most of the economists assume that Trump’s tax proposals will pass in the second half of this year, though about one-fifth expect that it will take until next year.

Most do not expect an infrastructure package, even if it passes this year, to boost the economy until 2018, the survey found.

Trump’s tax proposals will face many challenges before they become law. Most economists surveyed by NABE do not expect they will include a proposal from House Republicans to tax imports and exempt exports. That proposal is forecast to raise $1 trillion in revenue over a decade. Without it, the tax plan will need to raise other revenue or will make the government’s budget deficit larger.
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