Time Is Money
It’s bad enough that we have to pay taxes. The last thing a company wants is to spend months figuring out how much to pay. User-friendly tax codes have now become a key selling point for countries trying to entice business. Ireland’s easy-to-use code — it takes an average of only 76 hours for a ...
It's bad enough that we have to pay taxes. The last thing a company wants is to spend months figuring out how much to pay. User-friendly tax codes have now become a key selling point for countries trying to entice business. Ireland's easy-to-use code -- it takes an average of only 76 hours for a company to prepare, file, and pay taxes there, according to the World Bank's report Doing Business 2007 -- has helped make it a magnet for foreign investment. The most time-consuming place for a business to pay taxes is Brazil, where the process takes an incredible 2,600 hours. By contrast, it takes a mere 30 hours in Singapore, the easiest place to do business in the world. Here's how others add up:
It’s bad enough that we have to pay taxes. The last thing a company wants is to spend months figuring out how much to pay. User-friendly tax codes have now become a key selling point for countries trying to entice business. Ireland’s easy-to-use code — it takes an average of only 76 hours for a company to prepare, file, and pay taxes there, according to the World Bank’s report Doing Business 2007 — has helped make it a magnet for foreign investment. The most time-consuming place for a business to pay taxes is Brazil, where the process takes an incredible 2,600 hours. By contrast, it takes a mere 30 hours in Singapore, the easiest place to do business in the world. Here’s how others add up:
Country | Hours* |
Maldives | 0 |
United Arab Emirates | 12 |
New Zealand | 70 |
United Kingdom | 105 |
France | 128 |
Russia | 256 |
India | 264 |
United States | 325 |
Japan | 350 |
China | 872 |
*Time it takes to prepare, file, and pay the corporate income tax, the value added tax, and social security contributions (in hours per year).
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