US President Donald Trump has approved safeguard tariffs on imported large residential washing machines and imported solar cells and modules.

Hong Kong on February 2, 2018, ratified an Ordinance to enable the territory to soon join the OECD's Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and thereby more simply and more broadly agree to exchange tax information with other countries' tax authorities.

The Chinese tax administration has reported that businesses have saved CNY2 trillion (USD317.8bn) following the replacement of business tax with value-added tax, beginning in 2012.

On February 3, 2018, China's State Administration of Taxation set out new rules on the disallowance of tax treaty benefits where an entity fails to demonstrate it is the beneficial owner of Chinese assets from which passive income is derived.

About 260,000 businesses with operations in China will begin to be assessed for liability to the country's new environmental tax starting next month.

The EU is to apply existing anti-dumping measures on Chinese imports of seamless pipes and tubes of stainless steel for another five years.

China plans to actively expand imports and open up to foreign investment by reducing tariffs and taxes, according to a work report released by the Government ahead of the annual parliamentary session.

Chinese authorities are working on a long-awaited property tax to cool the country's overheated property market, according to a senior government official.

Denmark was found to have the heaviest burden of taxation as a percentage of the economy in a new study by accountancy firm UHY.

HM Revenue and Customs has updated its value-added tax guidance for online marketplaces and for suppliers using them to sell to UK consumers.

The first returns under China's new environmental tax are due online by April 1, 2018.

China's new Finance Minister, Liu Kun, has announced plans to reform the nation's taxation system, including value-added tax rate reductions.

China's State Council has announced a cut in value added tax rates as part of a CNY400bn (USD63bn) tax reduction package to stimulate growth.

The OECD has published new transfer pricing country profiles for Australia, China, Estonia, France, Georgia, Hungary, India, Israel, Liechtenstein, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and Uruguay, bringing the number of such overviews published by the OECD to 44.

Macau's Chief Executive has issued an order authorizing signature of the OECD Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information.

The tax agencies of China and Kazakhstan, with involvement also from the OECD, hosted a three-day tax conference to discuss the provision of capacity building support from China for those countries that will be involved in China's Belt and Road Initiative. It was attended by more than 250 delegates from 49 tax administrations, four international organizations, and five academic institutions.

Governments raised about USD33bn in carbon pricing revenue last year, a 50 percent increase from 2016, according to a new update by the World Bank.

China's Government announced recently that a local insurance company had issued the country's first tax-deferred pension insurance policy, saying it marked the beginning of tax-deferred pension plans in China.

Three years on from the commitments made at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, the overwhelming majority of governments have not taken the necessary action to contain growing risks to the climate, says the OECD. It said, with emissions on the rise again, OECD governments need to get serious about shifting their economies to a low-carbon model and stop investing in carbon-intensive infrastructure.

The OECD has requested stakeholders' input on the dispute resolution processes in place in Andorra, Anguilla, Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Faroe Islands, Macau (China), Morocco, and Tunisia.

The OECD recently released the seventh round of stage one peer review reports, assessing eight jurisdictions' efforts to implement the BEPS Action 14 minimum standard on tax dispute resolution.

The OECD Global Forum has released eight peer review reports, for Brunei, Macau, Switzerland, Barbados, the Seychelles, Liberia, Peru, and Tunisia, on the jurisdictions' efforts to adopt and comply with international tax standards on transparency and the exchange of tax-related information on request.

On October 23, 2018, the European Commission issued a request to the Italian Government that it revise its draft budgetary plan for 2019 because it breaches European Union fiscal rules.

The Italian Department of Finance has released new lists of government and private sector entities covered by Italy's split-payment mechanism.

Italy's tax agency on July 30, 2019, published a definitive version of the rules for the operation of the country's patent box regime.

Milan's Public Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation into whether Netflix owes tax in Italy, Italian daily Corriere Della Sera reported October 3, 2019.

On October 16, 2019, the Italian Council of Ministers approved the draft Budget law for 2020, which will prevent an automatic rise in the rate of value-added tax, and includes further measures designed to combat tax avoidance and evasion.

Tax officials in Armenia are to receive support from the Italian Revenue Agency to implement initiatives to tackle tax base erosion and profit shifting.

Switzerland and Italy are to amend the customs status of the Italian enclave of Campione d'Italia.

An invitation to submit comments with regards to the corporate tax exemption provided to ports in Italy was published in the January 10, 2020, issue of the Official Journal of the European Union.

On January 31, 2020, the Italian Revenue Agency released instructions on how companies, individuals, corporate groups, and partnerships can comply with their tax return filing obligations during 2020.

On February 10, 2020, the Italian tax agency commenced a short consultation on the rules surrounding the patent box self-assessment regime.

On March 4, 2020, the Italian tax authority published English language versions of the annual value-added tax form for 2020, together with instructions.

On March 12, 2020, the Italian Revenue Agency announced the suspension of its audit activities in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The European Commission has published its annual taxation trends report.

European car manufacturers have called on governments to ensure that a new test for measuring vehicle emissions does not create tax distortions for new cars entering the market.

Malta's Minister for Finance, Edward Scicluna, recently announced the launch of a number of fiscal incentives, which are intended to boost the take-up of voluntary private pensions.

A delegation from the European Parliament's PANA Committee will travel to Switzerland to discuss the efforts being taken to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax offences.

The European Union value-added tax gap – the overall difference between expected VAT revenue and actual EU member state collections – was EUR152bn in 2015, says the European Commission, highlighting the need for further reforms to tackle avoidance, error, and evasion.

Malta has enacted rules removing the bias in favor of debt financing by creating a notional interest deduction for equity financing.

Malta's Minister for Finance, Edward Scicluna, told delegates to a recent law conference at the Old University in Valletta that beneficial ownership regulations will be published in the coming weeks.

Appleby, the offshore law firm, has spoken out against recent media coverage, which implies but does not allege that there is wrongdoing in the papers recently exposed that include information on its clients' tax affairs.

A new report has been issued following an audit into how taxes in Malta are administered.

Malta's tonnage tax scheme has been conditionally approved for a period of 10 years by the European Commission under EU state aid rules.

Greens/EFA members of the European Parliament have called on the EU Code of Conduct Group to be more transparent about the criteria it used to create the EU's new blacklist of non-cooperative territories and how it will manage it going forward.

The Bermuda Government on January 31, 2018, updated the lists of the countries with which it will exchange country-by-country reports filed in Bermuda in 2018 and in 2019.

The OECD has recently launched a consultation on tackling the circumvention of its latest international tax transparency standard, the Common Reporting Standard, through the use by individuals of residency by investment (RBI), or citizenship by investment (CBI) schemes.

The European Commission has sent letters of formal notice to Cyprus, Greece, and Malta for not levying the correct amount of value-added tax on yachts.

The number of advance pricing agreements between EU member states and companies rose by 64 percent from 2015 to 2016, according to research by Eurodad.

Malta has reiterated its commitment to fighting aggressive tax planning, joining other EU member states who have unanimously agreed to amend the EU's tax information sharing law, the Directive on Administrative Cooperation.