Biggest Tax Shake-Up in a Decade Will Benefit 10 Million Australians

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison secured the votes needed to enact the most sweeping changes to the nation’s tax system in more than a decade, delivering a major legislative victory for his newly elected government and injecting stimulus into the slowing economy.

Four independent and minor-party senators on Thursday indicated they will support the legislation, meaning it’s set to become law in an upper house vote later in the day. That will bring A$158 billion ($111 billion) of income tax relief to more than 10 million workers and fulfill a pledge that was the cornerstone of Morrison’s bid for re-election in the May 18 ballot.

“Today there’s very good news for millions of working Australians who will get to keep more of their own money,” Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told reporters in Canberra on Thursday. He thanked the four senators for their support of the bill.

The cuts will be phased in and by 2024-25, new streamlined brackets will ensure 94% of Australians pay 30% income tax or less. The package includes immediate rebates of as much as A$1,080 for low- and middle-income earners, a much-needed sugar hit for the faltering economy that will be welcomed by the central bank.

Beyond the tax cuts and previously announced infrastructure spending, the policy agenda for the third-term government looks thin, other than tackling red tape and a review industrial relations laws to crack down on union corruption. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe is urging the government to consider stronger action including increased infrastructure investment and structural reforms.

“There are options other than monetary easing for putting us on a better path,” Lowe said on Tuesday after the central bank cut interest rates to a record-low 1%. “We will achieve better outcomes for society as a whole if the various arms of public policy are all pointing in the same direction.”

Lowe’s sense of urgency has been stoked by a litany of data that shows Australia is on track to record its weakest fiscal year since the last recession in 1991, dragged down by record household debt, moribund wages and two years of tumbling housing prices.

The Labor opposition is calling for the government to speed up the cuts instead of waiting until 2022-23, while there are concerns a loss in tax revenue may result in less spending on public services, especially if economic conditions further deteriorate.

The legislation ensures the top income tax rate of 45% kicks in at A$200,000 instead of the current A$180,000, and removes the 32.5% rate. By 2024-25, there will be three brackets:

Tax Rate	Salary Bracket	Workers in Band
19%	Up to A$45,000	24%
30%	A$45,001-A$200,000	70%
45%	Over A$200,000	6%

The Australian Council of Social Service, a group that lobbies for poverty reduction, welcomed the immediate rebate, which will see those earning between A$48,000 and A$90,000 getting A$1,080 of relief.

Still, in a statement earlier this week, it labeled the long-term tax cuts as “too expensive, too risky, too unfair, and too late.”

While six independent and minor party lawmakers collectively hold the balance of power in the Senate, the government only needs to win the support of four of them to pass legislation following the election. By the end of the last parliament, it had to court eight of the 10 so-called cross-benchers.

China Faces New Competition as Japan, India Eye Sri Lanka Port

4 Questions matters in Interview

Hiring for culture fit can seem like a mystery, but these 4 interview questions will help you get it right every time.

If there's one thing that keeps every founder up at night, it's hiring. Hiring the best talent is a massive and never-ending challenge. It's hard to hire your first employee, it's hard to hire your 50th employee, and it's still hard to hire your 500th employee. If you're just starting your company, you may as well get over the fact that you'll likely lose sleep over hiring. If you've read anything about hiring best practices, you've probably read about hiring for culture fit. This isn't an article about convincing you to hire on the basis of culture fit. This is an article on how to actually do that. While every company has a different culture, there are four questions that will help you identify if a candidate is a good culture fit, no matter where your company falls on the culture spectrum. In my role as CEO of Triplemint, I've hired more than 100 people, therefore my co-founder and I have interviewed close to 1,000 (admittedly, with all the lost sleep over the challenges of hiring, I didn't keep track of the exact number of interviews I've conducted). I've made great hires who were a near-perfect culture fit, and I've made less-than-stellar hires who ultimately didn't work out. There is no such thing as batting a thousand with hiring. You're going to make mistakes no matter how good you are at it. That said, in my personal experience I've found these four questions to be hugely helpful in determining culture fit.

1. How did the culture at your last company empower or disempower you? This is a really interesting question, because it will get candidates talking about their previous company through the lens of how they were affected by the company's culture. Getting candidates to talk about their past employer can be very telling. Do they openly throw the company under the bus? Do they recognize the positives even though it ultimately didn't work out? Asking specifically about the culture of their last company also tells you a lot about how they view the importance of culture. Their response will tell you if they've thought a lot about company culture or if they don't really know what it is. The question will also reveal how they think they are empowered or disempowered, which will give you a look into their motivations.

2. What were the characteristics of the best boss you've ever had? I like this question as a follow-up to the culture question, because it's somewhat similar but from a different angle. If you didn't get a sense for a candidate's view on culture and what motivates him or her, you likely will from this question. Did the candidate thrive under a boss who was extremely direct and valued performance above all else? Did he or she thrive under a boss that put as much emphasis on communication and interpersonal skills as results within the role?

3. Describe how you handled a conflict with one of your co-workers. It's always helpful to ask candidates about how they dealt with a conflict. As people, we tend to be more open and honest when recalling a specific event versus describing characteristics about ourselves. Understanding what the candidate perceives as a "conflict with a co-worker" will likely reveal information about the person's level of self-awareness. Understanding how someone dealt with a conflict will also give you insights into what he or she perceives as a reasonable and positive response to a conflict. No matter how wonderful your culture is, conflicts will arise. How your team deals with conflicts is the true test of your culture.

4. What kind of feedback do you expect to receive in this role and how often do you expect to receive it? Understanding a candidate's desire or hesitation to receive feedback tells you a lot about the person's expectations. The frequency and type of feedback that is shared within a company tends to be highly correlated to culture. Does the candidate expect feedback to be tied to core values? Does the person think feedback is only about performance in the role? Does he or she see feedback as a once-a-year HR formality or as part of a constant process of growth and improvement?

Ten IT trends to keep following in 2017

Containers, cloud, fast networking and IoT still top IT trends

From containers and faster networking to IoT and edge computing, these trends continue to define the role of IT pros in future data centers and the skill sets they need to hone.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- IT professionals have a tall order to fill. They must keep applications running as they evaluate new technology in preparation for whatever the future brings.

At Gartner's IT Operations Strategies and Solutions Summit here this week, Gartner analyst David Cappuccio summarized the top IT trends of the year. While not necessarily new, these 10 trends have an increasing impact on IT teams and the data center.

Data centers are disappearing. Traditional, on-premises data centers have faded, as companies provision business workloads using more efficient and cost-effective alternatives. Today, about 80% of business workloads run on premises, while the remaining 20% are in a cloud or an outsourced facility, Cappuccio said. By 2021, local workloads drop to about 20% to 25%, and the majority of workloads will run in the cloud or otherwise off premises.

Data centers will be interconnected. Connectivity is a hallmark of modern data center technology, but the growth of cloud and other off-premises facilities will spawn even tighter levels of connectivity using fiber links for high-speed, long-distance connectivity. Future interconnects will merge data centers and resources in a manner that more closely resembles peer-to-peer networks. The idea puts public cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider connectivity performance and resilience on par with on-premises private compute and storage resources, and it provides flexibility and agility on a grander scale.

Containers change applications. Containers continue to be one of the top IT trends in the enterprise. This is because they enable new forms of application development and deployment that would be impossible with even virtualized data centers. While this offers fertile ground for developers, IT professionals must implement and support containers, as well as address new management issues related to their use, such as governance, software licensing and so on. Containers can have a life span of milliseconds, which requires a solid infrastructure to create, monitor, manage and destroy containers, while organizing and tracking all of the resources used to operate them.

IT drives the business. Business leaders understand the need for IT and the role of IT services in the business, but the days of in-house IT dictating the applications, services and other technologies used by business units are over. The rapid growth of public cloud, SaaS and other competitive services has put traditional IT models on the defensive. There is no longer a need to wait for IT to assess, recommend or deploy services and workloads when effective options can be engaged faster, and with less hassle, within lines of business. Cappuccio said more than 20% of business IT spend is currently outside of IT control, which forces IT to innovate and compete to keep its seat at the table. Part of the answer is for IT to rethink its role as a service enabler and broker, rather than a sole source of enterprise IT.

Data centers will increasingly be a service. The notion of data center as a service (DCaaS) has gained traction, as businesses refocus away from infrastructure toward applications. But the choice of cloud, outsourcing, SaaS, PaaS, human resources as a service and even DCaaS is not an all-or-nothing proposition. One delivery model will probably not support all of an organization's needs, and teams will likely employ multiple models to meet different goals.

Stranded capacity must be identified and reduced. Stranded or orphaned capacity is certainly not new -- consider VM sprawl -- but the speed and agility offered by modern computing models make sprawl problems much more pronounced and potentially expensive. Twenty-eight percent of compute instances are now ghost servers -- instances that run and consume resources, but deliver no value to the business, Cappuccio said. Forty percent of racks are underprovisioned, servers are performing at just 32%, and 40% of storage provisioned is more than required. This all translates to wasted resources that cost the organization money.

IoT is still emerging. The internet of things (IoT) has quickly become one of the top IT trends, able to collect and transform tremendous amounts of data into unmatched insights for sales, process control and analysis. But the actual devices and software stack used in IoT deployments are still being defined. IoT devices can provide fast time to market, with prebuilt functionality, high scalability, vendor support and a reasonably complete vendor ecosystem. But IoT remains fraught with challenges due to its overall expense to install, product immaturity and a lack of standards overall.

Remote devices must be managed. Where IoT poses challenges for selection, deployment and storage, it also requires IT teams to manage remote devices -- all of those "things" -- which can pose a serious logistical challenge. IT staff must install and configure, operate and maintain, and then replace or retire every remote device in the environment. This might include tracking details, like battery replacement dates, IP addresses and even physical locations. Even device audits might be required periodically.

Micro and edge computing deserves attention. Instead of investing in more expensive network bandwidth, many organizations deploy small-scale compute and storage resources closer to the location of the actual work -- a strategy known as edge computing.

For example, a remote industrial site that compiles varied sensor data could deploy a small-scale computing infrastructure at or near the site to collect and even preprocess the data. It then performs some preliminary normalization and analytics before sending results to the main data center. Still, such remote or edge computing efforts pose other problems, such as resilience and maintenance. Organizations must consider the requirements and vulnerabilities of a remote computing platform.

Look ahead to new IT roles. These top IT trends, and the changing relationship between business and IT, have spawned new IT roles. While a single organization probably won't realize all of these new roles, chances are that one or more will gain acceptance over the next few years.

• An IoT architect will select and implement the components of an IoT system to ensure proper management and integration with other data center infrastructure and software.
• A cloud sprawl specialist will monitor resource usage in the public and private cloud to right-size resources and implement and enforce policies that minimize waste.
• A strategy architect will review existing infrastructure and offer guidance to optimize infrastructure that best accommodates business goals, and identify the technologies needed to achieve them.
• A capacity and resource specialist will analyze and forecast resources for the business to identify and use cost-effective alternative resources when possible.
• A broker and provider specialist will identify business services from a wealth of potential providers to guide the business to cost-effective services that can integrate with other business platforms.
• And, finally, a performance and end-to-end specialist will focus on application performance management to ensure workloads operate at peak effectiveness and user satisfaction.

From:

Stephen J. Bigelow is the senior technology editor of the Data Center and Virtualization Media Group. He can be reached at sbigelow@techtarget.comand @DatacenterTT.

Panama Papers rock financial world

A huge leak of documents has rocked the financial world revealing how some among the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.

The files leaked from a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca contain 40 years of data and include information on more than 210,000 companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions, from Panama to Hong Kong.

The files show how Mossack Fonseca clients were able to launder money, dodge sanctions and avoid tax.

In one case, the company offered an American millionaire fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities in direct breach of international regulations that stop money laundering and tax evasion.

More than 60 relatives and associates of heads of state and other politicians are implicated.

For instance, the files reveal a suspected billion-dollar money laundering ring involving close associates of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

Also mentioned are the brother-in-law of China’s President Xi Jinping; Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko; Argentina President Mauricio Macri; the late father of UK Prime Minister David Cameron and three of the four children of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The documents show that Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, had an undeclared interest linked to his wife’s wealth. He is now facing calls for his resignation.

The scandal also touches football’s world governing body, Fifa, the BBC reported.

Although there are legitimate ways of using tax havens, most of what has been going on is about hiding the true owners of money, the origin of the money and avoiding paying tax on the money.

The 11.5 million documents were obtained by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

It is the biggest leak in history, dwarfing the size of those released by the Wikileaks organisation.

http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/panama-papers-rock-financial-world/

Is it the beginning of the end for Apple's strong run?

Stock fell into bear territory for first time this month

The domestic Chinese market has been in meltdown over the last few weeks. First, the government moved to curb volatility by clamping down on short selling.

Then, China surprised investors by weakening its currency by almost 2% after a weekend of poor trade data and prompting a sell-off in global equities at the end of the month.

As a technology manager, what happens in China – and itsimplications for the wider economy and Asian consumer – is obviously a concern. We have around 5% of our portfolio in China, albeit in Hong Kong listed shares rather than in the A-share market. 

The Chinese economy is undoubtedly slowing and, while we do not believe there will be a recession, there is pressure on certain sectors. Some companies selling into China's economy will be vulnerable. For example, sales in the auto industry, where competition is increasing, have been disappointing. 

A number of industrial companies, such as Otis Elevators, have shown real weakness too. There is also pressure on luxury goods because of the crackdown on corruption.

But the slowdown may well be beneficial for other sectors, like internet companies, where we have a number of holdings. These companies are still seeing strong revenues because pricing is generally better on the internet and there are still lots of great deals at a time when consumers are becoming more price sensitive. 

Falling apple

There are fears it could be the beginning of the end for Apple's outperformance too. Most recently, Apple fell into bear market territory for the first time in several years this month. But Apple shares also saw a significant dip when the group announced its results in mid-July.

On the face of it, this is slightly baffling. Its results were still well within its guidance. Certainly, the company missed projections for revenue forecasts and its iPhone sales were not as strong, but it is still predicting £1bn in sales for the Apple Watch. 

Part of the problem is that Apple has been exceeding expectations for so long, an expectation that it will beat them all is now baked into the share price. One analyst suggested Apple shareholders had become 'spoilt' by the company constantly beating estimates. We believe it probably is the end of Apple's outperformance.

While there is good new user conversion within the US, outside the US, it is mostly a replacement cycle. In China, for example, Apple has been successful at getting the high end of the market, but we are sceptical about the extent to which it will make inroads further down the value chain. It has strong competitors in Xiaomi, a privately owned Chinese electronics company, and others.

Bad deals

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the tech sphere, Microsoft recently wrote down $7.6bn in connection with its Nokia deal as the reprioritisation of the business continues. This is more than the $7.2bn it paid for the phone group in the first place and confirms the view that this was one of the worst deals in corporate history. 

The premise on which the deal was done was fundamentally flawed and the consultants who dreamt it up were guilty of some woolly thinking.

Certainly, Nokia was the number two player in the phone business, but their analysis neglected to note that Apple makes 90% of the profits in the mobile phone business. The second largest player makes no money at all. This meant Microsoft spent its giant cash pile on a business that, in effect, has no return.

Helping Sri Lanka’s New Democracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/opinion/helping-sri-lankas-new-democracy.html?_r=0

By RYAN GOODMANJAN. 19, 2015                    

Sri Lanka’s voters shocked themselves and the world this month by tossing out their president, who crushed the Tamil insurgency in 2009 and then led the country, along with his brother as defense secretary, to the brink of authoritarianism. The new president has promised to restore freedom of the press, independence of judges, and the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Democracy advocates, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say this is the country’s most important chance to open a new chapter in more than a decade.

But the country must make sure that members of the ousted regime do not return to power and that the new government can secure its authority. The United States — and only the United States — can do something to help make that happen.

The former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, aren’t politically dead yet. Critical parliamentary elections are scheduled for April. The new president, Maithripala Sirisena, rode to electoral victory on the back of a diverse group of parties. He must now consolidate his power so that democratic reform can go ahead.

What can the United States do to help? Mr. Kerry said the United States would take up longstanding human rights concerns with the new government. The State Department has spearheaded the creation of a United Nations investigation into war crimes committed under the Rajapaksa regime during the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009.

But that inquiry offers both too much and too little at this point. Too much, because pushing for full, sweeping accountability in this fragile moment of transition could destabilize the new government and jeopardize the warming of relations between the United States and Sri Lanka. Too little, because the United Nations investigation doesn’t have any teeth — the panel leading it doesn’t have the powers of a criminal tribunal, and cannot even impose a financial penalty.

Here is where Washington can play a constructive role.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the former defense secretary, oversaw the Sri Lankan armed forces’ worst atrocities during the final stages of the civil war and, as it happens, he is a naturalized American citizen. (Indeed, he used to live in Los Angeles, where he worked as a computer systems operator at Loyola Law School.)

As a citizen, Mr. Rajapaksa can be held liable under the War Crimes Act of 1996, which puts war crimes anywhere in the world under the jurisdiction of United States courts if the perpetrator, or the victim, is a United States citizen. Put another way, the United States has a perfect justification to go after Mr. Rajapaksa individually.

Independent observers have long viewed Gotabaya Rajapaksa as an obstacle, perhaps even more than his brother, to a smooth political transition in Sri Lanka. There is little indication that he will respect the new government, which has opened an investigation to look into widely reported allegations that he and his brother attempted to engineer a military coup to overturn the election results.

It is in the new government’s interest to move decisively to protect its democratic victory by eliminating the threat of Mr. Rajapaksa’s return to power. That is a distinct possibility if his brother, Mahinda, succeeds in a bid to maintain control over the powerful opposition party.

That’s why marginalizing Mr. Rajapaksa now is important. The new president, Mr. Sirisena, has signaled that he is open to domestic criminal prosecutions to ward off foreign war crimes trials. And the president’s spokesman has indicated that the government may be willing to prosecute specific war crimes, such as the so-called White Flag incident, in which surrendering Tamil leaders with white flags were allegedly executed by soldiers on the final day of the civil war. That’s a highly significant statement because, as many Sri Lankans know, and as the State Department reported to Congress, the army chief at the time said that Mr. Rajapaksa gave the order “they must all be killed,” and later added that he would be willing to testify in a war crimes trial.

But proceeding against Mr. Rajapaksa will be politically challenging for the new Sri Lankan government to do on its own. The United States could help by signaling its own interest in opening a criminal case against Mr. Rajapaksa in the event that Sri Lanka doesn’t. That would give the new government both an opportunity and a justification to clean its house. Because of Mr. Rajapaksa’s citizenship, the United States would also be less vulnerable to accusations that it was meddling in the affairs of another nation.

The Obama administration might even say, in a very public way, that it will decide whether to proceed with its own criminal inquiry after giving Sri Lanka’s new establishment an opportunity to move first. Such signals from the United States could help politically marginalize the Rajapaksas at a critical point in the life of the country. They would also bolster President Sirisena’s efforts to have the country repudiate the past and recognize that its best future lies with his administration. The United States should do its part to bring accountability to Sri Lanka and assist its transition to democracy.

Ryan Goodman is a professor of law, politics and sociology at New York University and co-editor in chief of the blog Just Security.