Global tax deal backed by 130 nations

Yahoo – AFP, Jürgen HECKER, July 1, 2021 

US digital giants are the main targets of the new tax

A total of 130 countries have agreed a global tax reform ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share wherever they operate, the OECD said on Thursday, but some EU states refused to sign up. 

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a statement that global companies, including US behemoths Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple would be taxed at a rate of at least 15 percent once the deal is implemented. 

The new tax regime will add some $150 billion to government coffers globally once it comes into force, which the OECD said it hoped would be in 2023. 

"The framework updates key elements of the century-old international tax system, which is no longer fit for purpose in a globalised and digitalised 21st century economy," the OECD said. 

The formal agreement follows an endorsement by the G7 group of wealthy nations last month, and negotiations now move to a meeting of the G20 group of developed and emerging economies on July 9-10 in Venice, Italy. 

US President Joe Biden said the latest deal "puts us in striking distance of full global agreement to halt the race to the bottom for corporate taxes." 

Germany, another backer of the tax reform, hailed it as a "colossal step towards tax justice", and France said it was "the most important tax agreement in a century". 

British finance minister Rishi Sunak, whose country holds the G7 presidency, said "the fact that 130 countries across the world, including all of the G20, are now on board, marks a further step in our mission to reform global tax". 

'In everyone's interest'

But EU low-tax countries Ireland and Hungary declined to sign up to the agreement reached in the OECD framework, the organisation said, highlighting lingering divisions on global taxation. 

Both countries are part of a group of EU nations also including Luxembourg and Poland that have relied on low tax rates to attract multinationals and build their economies. 

Ireland, the EU home to tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple, has a corporate tax rate of just 12.5 percent. 

Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has warned that the new rules could see Ireland lose 20 percent of its corporate revenue. 

On Thursday, Donohoe said Ireland still "broadly supports" the deal, but not the 15-percent tax floor. 

The tax plan got a much-needed boost from Joe Bidens's administration

"There is much to finalise before a comprehensive agreement is reached", he said, adding that Ireland would "constructively engage" in further discussions. 

Also expressing concerns is Switzerland -- known for its banking secrecy laws -- which said it would support the measures despite "major reservations" and that it hoped the interests of "small, innovative countries" be taken into account. 

An agreement for the implementation of the plan is planned for October. 

Nine of the 139 participants in the talks have so far not signed on to the agreement. 

But China, whose position was being closely watched as it offers tax incentives to key sectors, endorsed the agreement. 

"It is in everyone's interest that we reach a final agreement among all Inclusive Framework Members as scheduled later this year," said OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann. 

"This package does not eliminate tax competition, as it should not, but it does set multilaterally agreed limitations on it," Cormann said, adding that "it also accommodates the various interests across the negotiating table, including those of small economies and developing jurisdictions". 

'More equitable' global economy 

Finance chiefs have characterised a minimum tax as necessary to stem competition between countries over who can offer multinationals the lowest rate. 

For Biden, a global tax agreement will help maintain US competitiveness since he has proposed hiking domestic corporate taxes to pay for an infrastructure and jobs programme with a price tag of around $2 trillion. 

Biden -- whose tax plans face a potentially uphill battle in Congress -- hailed an "important step in moving the global economy forward to be more equitable for workers and middle class families in the United States and around the world." 

He noted that those nations who signed up make up more than 90 percent of the world's economy. 

The OECD's statement said the package "will provide much-needed support to governments needing to raise necessary revenues" to fix their budgets and invest in measures to back the post-Covid recovery. 

Oxfam, a charity, meanwhile said that the deal fell short of a tax level needed to give poorer countries a sufficient share of additional tax revenue. 

Calling the deal "skewed-to-the-rich and completely unfair", Oxfam said that signatories had missed a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a profoundly more equal world".

Spanish king distances himself from scandal-hit father

Yahoo – AFP, March 15, 2020

Juan Carlos handed over power to his son, Felipe in 2014 (AFP Photo/Juanjo Martín)

Madrid (AFP) - King Felipe VI of Spain moved Sunday to distance himself from his scandal-hit father, stripping him of his palace allowance and renouncing what he was due to inherit from him.

A statement from the palace announced that he had stripped the former king Juan Carlos, of his allowance and was himself renouncing what he was due to inherit from him.

The announcement came after media reports that Juan Carlos had received 100 million dollars (90 million euros) from Saudi Arabia via an offshore account -- and that King Felipe himself was also a beneficiary.

The money was lodged in a Swiss bank account in the name of a Panamanian foundation.

In the palace statement, the reigning king said that in April he had made it clear to a notary that he would accept no money from the foundation in question.

He also that he had absolutely no knowledge of having been named as a beneficiary to another foundation, which according to press reports paid millions of euros towards his father's flights in private jets.

On Tuesday, the Spanish parliament decided against launching an investigation into suspected money laundering by the former king Juan Carlos.

Reported Saudi payments to ex-king

Spain's hard-left Podemos party had called for it after reports earlier this month that in 2008 Juan Carlos received $100 million from Saudi king Abdallah via the Swiss account of an entity listed in Panama.

The Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve added that in 2012, $65 million of that sum was given by the king to his former mistress, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.

Then a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph said that 52-year-old King Felipe was also a beneficiary of the fund, which it said had been set up when Juan Carlos was still on the throne.

Juan Carlos, now 82, came to the throne after the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 and is widely respected for having favoured a transition to democracy.

But he lost his immunity from prosecution after handing power to his son, Felipe, in June 2014 following a 39-year reign.

He resigned from public life last year after a series of scandals about his private life.

In 2012, he outraged Spaniards by going elephant hunting in Botswana at the height of the country's recession.

Spanish reports say Juan Carlos has until now received an annual allowance from the state of more than 194,000 euros.

EU expands tax blacklist to 15 countries, including UAE

Yahoo – AFP, March 12, 2019

The "naming and shaming" of countries into better tax policies comes only days
after a money-laundering blacklist by the EU was torpedoed by the bloc's own
member governments, after a draft included Saudi Arabia (AFP Photo/Emmanuel
DUNAND)

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union expanded its tax haven blacklist to 15 countries on Tuesday, adding the United Arab Emirates and Bermuda over the objections of powerful member states such as Italy.

The list was first drawn up in 2017 in the wake of several scandals, including the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks, that pushed the EU into doing more to fight tax evasion by multinationals and the rich.

Seven countries are to be moved back from a grey list because reform commitments had not been met. These are Aruba, Belize, Bermuda, Fiji, Oman, Vanuatu and Dominica, an EU statement said.

They are joined by three other countries whose tax policies have grown more aggressive in the past months. They are Barbados, the United Arab Emirates and the Marshall Islands.

Italy long resisted the addition of the UAE. The Middle East powerhouse has recently made significant investments in the economically troubled European country.

Rome had wanted to keep the Emirates on the so-called grey list of countries that have made pledges to get their tax laws in order with a standard set by Brussels.

"Everything will be solved" when new legislation in passed in the UAE, Italian Finance Minister Giovanni Tria said. "The Emirates will come out immediately afterwards."

Britain, just weeks before its planned divorce from the EU on March 29, resisted the addition of its overseas territory Bermuda but relented last week.

Five countries remain blacklisted because they did nothing to justify moving them off the original list of tax havens: American Samoa, Guam, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the US Virgin Islands

This "naming and shaming" of countries into better tax policies comes only days after a money-laundering blacklist by the EU was torpedoed by the bloc's own member governments, after a draft included Saudi Arabia.

Romanian Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici, whose country holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, earlier told reporters that last minute promises by countries to fix their tax policies would delay the list until May.

However French counterpart Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister said he wanted no delays.

"France wants the list to be adopted today," he said.

Gates says billionaires should pay 'significantly' more taxes

Yahoo – AFP, February 19, 2018

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says billionaires should pay
"significantly" more in taxes (AFP Photo/Etienne LAURENT)

Washington (AFP) - Bill Gates says he has paid more than $10 billion in taxes over a lifetime but billionaires like him should pay "significantly" more because they benefit more from the system.

The Microsoft co-founder, the world's second richest man after Amazon's Jeff Bezos, was critical of a recent US tax overhaul that slashed corporate taxes and lowered the top bracket for individual income.

"I've paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes," he said in an interview Sunday with CNN.

He said the tax overhaul passed in December favors the rich despite Republican claims it will help the middle and working classes.

"People who are wealthier tended to get dramatically more benefits than the middle class or those who are poor, and so it runs counter to the general trend you'd like to see, where the safety net is getting stronger and those at the top are paying higher taxes," he said.

With a sixth of the US population living in what he called "disappointing" conditions, he said US policymakers need to think about rising inequality and ask, "Why aren't we doing a better job for those people?"

Europe turns on Facebook, Google for digital tax revamp

Yahoo – AFP, Céline LE PRIOUX, November 19, 2017

Companies like Google are being urged to pay more tax (AFP Photo/
JOSH EDELSON)

Brussels (AFP) - They have revolutionised the way we live, but are US tech giants the new robber barons of the 21st century, banking billions in profit while short-changing the public by paying only a pittance in tax?

With public coffers still strained years after the worst of the debt crisis, EU leaders have agreed to tackle the question, spurred on by French President Emmanuel Macron who has slammed the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple as the "freeloaders of the modern world".

As recently as March, five of the world's top 10 valued companies were Silicon Valley behemoths: Apple, Google's Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. (Germany's SAP was Europe's biggest and 56th on the global list).

But tax rules today are designed for yesterday's economy when US multinationals -- such as General Motors, IBM or McDonald's-- entered countries loudly, with new factories, jobs and more taxes for the taking.

These firms had what tax specialists call "permanent establishment", when companies showed a clear physical presence measured and taxed through tangible, real world assets.

But today in most EU nations, the US tech titans exist almost exclusively in the virtual world, their services piped through apps to smart phones and tablets from designers and data servers oceans away.

Ghost-like, Silicon Valley has turned Europe's economies upside down, but often with just a skeleton staff and some office space in markets with millions of users or customers.

Nation-less

According to EU law, to operate across Europe, multinationals have almost total liberty to choose a home country of their choosing. Not surprisingly, they choose small, low tax nations such as Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg.

Thus, it is through Ireland that Facebook draws its wealth from millions of accounts across Europe. There are 33 million accounts in France and 31 million in Germany, according to recent data.

While users enjoy the platform, Facebook tracks likes, comments and page views and sells the data to companies who then target consumers.

But unlike the economy of old, Facebook sells its data to French companies not from France but from a great, nation-less elsewhere, with no phone number, address or physical "presence" for a customer who probably cares little.

It is in states like Ireland, whose official tax rate of 12.5 percent is the lowest in Europe, that the giants have parked their EU headquarters and book profits from revenues made across the bloc.

Indeed, actual revenues from advertising are minimal in France and Germany, but at Facebook HQ Ireland they grew to 7.9 billion euros, even though the vast majority does not come from the tiny EU island-nation of a mere 2.5 million users.

Google follows the same pattern: in Germany in 2015, it had a little over 71 million users, in France just over 55 million. But in both nations, revenues are minimal.

Yet, in Ireland, where the number of search engine users is less than five million, revenues for Google-parent Alphabet reached 22.6 billion euros in 2015.

According to an analysis by Paul Tang, a specialist on tax issues at the European Parliament, France lost 741 million euros in tax revenue and Germany 889 million euros between 2013 and 2015 due to so-called "tax planning" by Google and Facebook.

'No transparency'

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that such tax schemes cost governments around the world as much as $240 billion a year in lost revenue, according to a 2015 estimate.

"The actual activity of each company, including US tech giants, is not known," said Manon Aubry, spokeswoman for the NGO Oxfam.

"Beyond the number of accounts or users in each country, it would be necessary to know in the case of Google for example, the amount of advertising sales in each country. We do not have it."

For car-ride smartphone service Uber, "we need to know the number of rides, but we don't have it," she said.

"One of the first issues, therefore, is that of transparency: to rule that large companies publish data on activities and taxes paid in all the countries where they are present."

To the European Commission, the digital shortfall on tax is clear. The effective tax rate on the profit of digital giants in the EU averages only nine percent, while that of traditional companies exceeds 20 percent, it said.

Facebook draws its wealth from millions of accounts across Europe by
being based in Ireland (AFP Photo/Justin TALLIS)

'Political crap'

Apple, also based in Ireland, became one of the EU's most emblematic tax cases when Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager ordered the iconic iPhone maker to pay 13 billion euros in back-taxes.

Vestager said the US giant had benefitted from illegal state aid, a gift from Ireland in exchange for choosing Dublin as its headquarters, with thousands of jobs at stake in the deal.

Brussels says Dublin's red carpet treatment accorded Apple an effective corporate tax rate of one percent on its European profits in 2003 -- a rate that decreased to a scant 0.005 percent in 2014 -- just a fraction of the official rate.

"It's total political crap," Apple chief executive Tim Cook barked at the time.

Undeterred, Vestager has gone after similar arrangements, such as those revealed in the Luxleaks scandal that exposed deals struck between Luxembourg and a long list of multinationals, including online US retail giant Amazon.

Faced with this situation, several solutions are under study.

Driven by Macron, France has proposed an unusual idea that has so far divided Europe: tax the US tech giants on sales generated in each European country, rather than on the profits that are cycled through low-tax countries.

France says this proposal, presented by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire in September, has received the support of some 20 countries, including Germany, Italy and Spain.

But there is fierce opposition from states like Cyprus, Malta, Ireland or Luxembourg -- countries that have linked their EU membership to low corporate tax and thus transformed their economies from rural backwaters to financial hubs in a globalised world.

Global, not EU, solution

Member states now agree that the problem would be best addressed at the international level, in the G20 or by the OECD, in order to prevent a high-tech exodus from the EU.

Caught by surprise by the French initiative, the European Commission announced at the end of September that it will also propose solutions in 2018.

Ideally, Brussels agrees that there needs to be a major reform of international tax rules, which would establish a closer link between the way value is created and the place where it is taxed.

Without rejecting the French proposal, the commission wants to dust off an old project from 2011 -- for a long time deadlocked because of the differences among the 28.

Relaunched in October 2016, the idea has one of the most cumbersome acronyms ever to come out of Brussels: the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base or CCCTB -- an ambitious bid to consolidate a company's tax base across the EU.

This draft legislation is currently being examined by the 28 EU member states and taxation of the digital economy could easily be included in the scope of the rules that may be adopted.

Under the plan, all multinationals operating in the EU with total sales of more than 750 million euros would be fixed at only one place of taxation, with one tax administration.

However, this tax would be distributed in all the countries where the company operates, and not according to the level of booked profit in each of these states, but according to the level of activity.

This level of activity in each member state would be measured using a combination of factors, including the number of employees, the importance of tangible assets (buildings, machinery, etc.) and sales.

French MEP Alain Lamassoure, co-rapporteur of the project, proposes to add a fourth idea: the volume of personal data collected and used by a digital platform wherever its services are used.

But in Europe, all is made infinitely more complicated since the adoption of new European legislation on tax matters requiring unanimity of the EU's current 28 members.

In addition to these European proposals, the OECD is working on a global solution, which it must present to the G20 finance ministers at their next meeting in April in Washington.

This initiative would have the merit of including Europe as well as the United States, Japan and emerging countries.

Until last October, the United States had dragged its feet in efforts to better tax its national champions, but changed attitude. Specifically, it agreed to set up a working group with France in the OECD.

"The Americans are in the same situation as us: their own tax system is not adapted to the current economy and they too are experiencing very substantial revenue losses that must be compensated," EU economics commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.

"Taxation of the US tech giants is a global problem and the answer should be as well."

Panama Papers database on shell companies goes online

Yahoo – AFP, Paul Handley, May 10, 2016

An online database has been put up to allow public access to the Panama Papers
 11.5 million documents, leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca (AFP
 Photo/Rodrigo Arangua)

Washington (AFP) - The public gained its first access to the Panama Papers records of over 200,000 secret offshore companies when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists put a searchable database up online.

The database, built on just a portion of the 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, reveals more than 360,000 names of individuals and companies behind the anonymous shell firms, the ICIJ said.

It reveals the full extent to which the world's wealthy, alongside criminals, create such nominee companies to stash and transfer assets out of sight of the law and tax officials.

Reports already published in April based on the explosive dossier linked some of the world's most powerful leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron and others to unreported offshore companies.

Iceland's prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and Spain's industry minister Jose Manuel Soria, were forced to resign when they were tied to shell companies.

Until now access to the total cache of documents, originally provided by a mysterious "John Doe", was restricted to the ICIJ and a select group of international media.

Panama Papers leaks: political connections (AFP Photo/Adrian Leung,

John Saeki)

'In the public interest'

The ICIJ said Monday it is publishing some of the information catalogued in a database "in the public interest," as a global movement against tax evasion and the secrecy accorded the beneficial owners of anonymous shell companies gains force.

The database "allows users to explore the networks of companies and people that used -- and sometimes abused -- the secrecy of offshore locales with the help of Mossack Fonseca and other intermediaries," the ICIJ said.

It said it was not making available raw records online, nor was it putting all the information from the records out, in part to prevent access to bank account details and personal data of those mentioned.

The database can be searched by individual and company name and address, and shows links between those in the database.

But it gives no information -- beyond their name -- on the full identities of those behind the companies, nor of the underlying assets linked to the accounts.

And often the names of companies are linked to other similarly anonymous companies.

Even so, the individuals associated with the firms plainly come from all four corners of the globe. Many of the names are Chinese, Middle Eastern, Latin American and European.

The data came from nearly four decades of digital archives of Mossack Fonseca, one of the leading firms in the world for creating secret companies.

It is not known how the documents came to light; Mossack Fonseca says its computer records were hacked from abroad.

However they were obtained, "John Doe" first provided them to the German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, which then approached ICIJ to organize a collective analysis of them.

Graphic showing public figures forced to resign or under pressure following the

Panama papers revelations (AFP Photo/Kun Tian, Alain Bommenel)

Criminals, filmmakers, footballers

The groups working with the ICIJ had full access to the Panama Papers, and their research has linked political leaders, celebrities and a few criminals to the companies.

- Putin's closest circle moved $2 billion through banks and shadow companies, according to the ICIJ, prompting the Russian leader to claim the Panama Papers was a US plot against him.

- Argentine President Mauricio Macri was also linked to offshore companies.

- China censored media and online social networks from mentioning links between the families of Chinese leaders with offshore entities.

- The names of Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, Hong Kong film star Jackie Chan and Spanish movie director Pedro Almodovar, all came up in the database.

Mossack Fonseca on Thursday sought a court order last week to prevent the ICIJ from putting the data online, arguing it would violate attorney-client privilege.

But the ICIJ said it is important the public be able to look up information on any offshore company.

"We think that information about who owns the company should be public and transparent," Marina Walker Guevara, deputy director of the ICIJ, told CNN.

She stressed, however, that "this is not disclosing private information en masse."

Related Articles:

Panama Papers showed vulnerability of whole system: Panama president
Switzerland, Singapore join clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

Panama Papers showed vulnerability of whole system: Panama president

Yahoo – AFP, May 3, 2016

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela delivers keynote address at a luncheon
during the Washington Conference on the Americas at the State Department on
May 3, 2016 in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan)

Washington (AFP) - The scandal triggered by the Panama Papers leak of information on how and where the world's wealthy stash funds to avoid detection or taxes underscored many countries' vulnerabilities, President Juan Carlos Varela said Tuesday.

Speaking at the State Department in Washington, the Panamanian president said the documents "reveal a worldwide problem, that involves many countries with legal and financial institutions" vulnerable to actions "that are not in the public interest."

Mossack Fonseca's founder lawyer Ramon

 Fonseca is a friend of Panama's President 

Juan Carlos Varela (shown here) and, until 

March, served as a senior advisor in his 

cabinet (AFP Photo/Rodrigo Arangua)

To that end, countries need to improve transparency and information sharing, Varela argued.

"We urge the international community to maintain a respectful dialogue through diplomatic channels," he added.

Panama and the United States last week signed an agreement on sharing of back account information in a step Panama's finance minister hailed as proof of his country's cooperation in fighting tax evasion.

The bilateral agreement comes weeks after the Panama Papers, a series of reports around the world revealing how one Panamanian law firm set up offshore entities to help the world's wealthy stash their assets.

Following the revelations, Panama has come under intense international pressure to open its financial sector to greater transparency or risk being put back on a global "tax haven" blacklist.

While the government has long said it is committed to that goal and has made some reforms in that direction, it has so far not signed up to an international standard on automatic sharing of tax information set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Panama's President Juan Carlos Varela, left, sits with Singapore's President 

Tony Tan, right, for a meeting at the Istana or presidential palace on Friday, 

April 22, 2016, in Singapore. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Related Article:

Switzerland, Singapore join clampdown on bank secrecy (Update)

Matthew message (Channelled by Suzanne Ward, March 20, 2016)

Matthew Ward - April 20, 2016

Matthew Ward

With loving greetings from all souls at this station, this is Matthew. We begin by addressing the issue that most of your expressed concerns pertain to, global reset. What is its purpose, who is behind it, and how will it affect your bank accounts and investments? While we have not used the more recently-coined term, “global reset,” several years ago we started talking about what it is—the changeover from your current monetary system, which has no foundation whatsoever, to a system based on precious metals. The transition process will be handled as smoothly as possible to minimize disruption in financial services and anyone whose money has been honestly earned and invested need have no concerns.

Whoever sets the rules for the world’s banking and lending institutions and interest rates controls the economy. After individuals in Bavaria who felt superior to the masses designated themselves “the Illuminati” and subsequently expanded their influence in all directions, that secret society has applied their rules worldwide. They did so with ease, as long before they came on the scene, the stage had been set by a few rich and powerful families whose greed, ingenuity and ruthlessness gave them economic control.

Global reset is a significant step toward ending that centuries-long control. Although the term is not used, its purpose—to stabilize the global economy by putting all currencies on the gold standard—is one of several provisions in NESARA, the acronym for National Economic Security and Reformation Act that was written by some of Earth’s Golden Age master planners in collaboration with evolved residents of Earth. Even today relatively few people are aware of this United States legislation signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 because those who knew about it were bound by a “gag order” that he and other Illuminati members of the government imposed.

After the Act became publicized to some extent via dissemination of information transmitted by off-planet sources to their receivers, the government set up a disinformation Web site—National Economic Stabilization [later changed to Security] and Recovery Act—and incorrect information about NESARA was circulated to mislead people who had heard about it. Never has it been an investment program, nor does it include the delivery of “prosperity packages,” depositing millions of dollars in bank accounts or cancelling legitimate debts.

The authentic NESARA was to be announced worldwide and go into effect September 12, 2001. To prevent that world-changing event, President George W. Bush and his Illuminati colleagues ordered the infamous betrayal of their country commonly known as “9/11.” That also let them move forward on their pre-planned invasion of Iraq under the “war on terror” banner.

It would be natural to wonder why a program that has monumental global ramifications began with legislation in the United States. First, NESARA’s provisions had to be framed within your laws; otherwise, it would be a matter of souls from other civilizations imposing their ideas upon the people of Earth, and universal laws prohibit that kind of interference even when it is in the people’s best interests.

Second, it was imperative that the profound changes the Act contains be implemented first in the United States because it was the most Illuminati-ridden and the most powerful nation in your world. Although the latter status now shares the spotlight, that government’s actions still heavily influence what happens in many other countries. And it was necessary to act on NESARA’s provision that changes the United States’ corporate status that had been surreptitiously set up by the Illuminati to a republic, as was intended by the colonists who waged the war for independence.

The Act’s primary economic thrust is something that could not be spelled out in any legislation: legally obtaining the vast wealth that has been illegally and immorally amassed by the Illuminati and using those funds to eliminate impoverishment, which, by and large, is of their creating. Let us cite an example that you may remember from previous messages. The hurricane that devastated Haiti was caused by the Illuminati’s weather control technology; after the storm subsided, former US presidents Bush and Clinton went there to divert into their own pockets the monies donated for aid and reconstruction. As for the people of Haiti, these six years later they still are living in unsanitary, substandard conditions just as before the hurricane hit, and many residences are makeshift hovels amidst the rubble of destroyed communities.

The unconscionable disparity between the haves and the have-nots in your world caused an imbalance in Earth’s energy field that must be remedied, and other NESARA provisions also are designed to do that. They cancel debts incurred through IMF loans; end usurious interest rates; topple the privately-owned Federal Reserve System, whose tentacles span the globe, and its collection agency, the IRS; and end the currency trading that has enabled the Illuminati to reap fortunes, and that is where global reset fits in.

Recently a reader wrote: “I remember last year, or the year before...he [Matthew] said we wouldn’t get the global money exchange till 2017.” That is a considerable misinterpretation of what we said:

That said, we happily tell you that the decade of delay in your society’s advancement will end in your year 2017, a most propitious timeframe indeed with a celestial window similar to the one during the December 2012 solstice that eased Earth into fourth density. [September 23, 2014]

After that message went out, numerous readers had questions about that statement, and we want to mention one: Do you mean that no important developments can happen until the end of 2017? Dear brothers and sisters, important developments have been happening ever since Earth embarked on her ascension course 80-some years ago! However, it is likely that the first development to be unmistakably obvious to your whole world will be global reset. This complex process requires the cooperation of a large number of national leaders, and, with ever-rising vibrations, their agreement to proceed could come this year. If not that soon, please don’t be disappointed—an honest, secure foundation for your global economy is on the near horizon.

The “Panama papers” will lead to another significant economic reform. The international law firm whose records were hacked and released to the media always has acted within the laws that regulate the establishing of shell companies; firms in the United States and other countries that also set up these kinds of companies for their clients are regulated as well. After providing this service, the firms no longer are involved. While it has long been known that many wealthy individuals are using shell companies to hide their money and avoid paying taxes on it, there was no evidence to prove their criminal activity. The Panamanian firm’s files with names of their clients’ companies gave a starting point for the ongoing investigation into the maze of illegal steps taken by the owners to cover their tracks, discoveries that will result in striking down the laws that permit the formation of “shells.”

“This year I've been receiving a lot of messages from different people about the tithe. I would like to know what Matthew has to say about it.” Giving 10% of one’s income to the church was a Vatican edict that enabled popes and others high in the church hierarchy to live in opulence and parish priests to live comfortably while poverty was the lot of many in the Catholic congregation. Other religions adopted the tithe to build grand churches to “praise God.” Church is nota building, it is each individual’s personal relationship with God; sharing from the heart is godliness, the tithe was devised by man with greed as its taproot. When the peoples realize that Christianity was organized by the heads of church and state to control the masses and enrich themselves and other religions also were corrupted by the infiltration of dark minds, all dogmas will fall by the wayside and the pureness of spirituality will endure.

“I just heard about this movement for a new world government. Matthew assured us this would neverhappen!!!!” In many messages we have assured you that the Illuminati never will attain their goal of world domination. Without knowing what this reader heard, all we can say to all of you is, please do not associate a centralized governing body with One World Government or New World Order, two designations for the Illuminati’s global domination plan that includes eliminating most of the population—the “useless eaters,” as attributed to Henry Kissinger. We reassure you, that plan is doomed because their global network came apart at the seams and the fragments are unraveling.

Freedom burns in the heart of humankind, yet rarely have Earth’s peoples lived freely. For long ages strongmen increased their landholdings and power by brutal conquest—troops were forced into battle; untold numbers were killed, captured, or sold into slavery; and all except the privileged few lived at bare subsistence level. After governing systems were labeled, the Illuminati made a mockery of democracy by putting ones within their ranks as candidates; rigging elections; and bribing, blackmailing, threatening or assassinating members of governments. They declared what country must be fought to keep us safe from that kind of government or that ideology, and they started civil and international wars.

Like their forbearers, they thrived on war. By producing and selling weapons, ammunitions and other war machinery to both sides, they profited handsomely. By setting new national borders or simply taking over a country and subjugating its populace, they kept expanding their empire. By infiltrating governments, military forces, intelligence agencies, judicial and economic systems, religions, education, media, commerce, multinational corporations, the medical field, film industry and entertainment venues, eventually they controlled everything that impacts life in your world. By relentlessly creating fear, grief, unjustness and poverty, conditions that produce the energy that fuels them, they have kept your world in their clutches.

That long sad chapter of your history is nearing its end. It is Gaia’s desire that all peoples of Earth live freely, peaceably, cooperatively across boundaries, across seas, and all share equally in the planet’s natural abundance. In keeping with her desire, the best aspects of your governing philosophies and visionary ideas will be blended into a global system led by individuals with moral and spiritual integrity and whose wise leadership will maintain peace and prosperity. Beloved family, the world you are helping to create in linear time and exists in the continuum—Earth’s Golden Age abloom in all its glory—is grandly flourishing within that benevolent governance.

“If Light on the planet actually is continually intensifying, why is there still so much random violence? Why aren’t peace talks successful in ending wars? It is lamentably so that progress in those respects is moving slowly. By and large, this is due to individuals’ resistance to change what they are accustomed to—a belief, policy, tradition, procedure, habit or anything else that is familiar. Let us give an example that you may not have considered as a deterrent to raising the consciousness level and spiritual awareness of your society.

Some candidates running for office in the United States are pledging adherence to the Constitution, a document compiled when owning slaves was white people’s right and only men were considered capable of voting intelligently. Well before the Bill of Rights granted citizenship to former slaves and permitted women to cast ballots, there was A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The second amendment, written about 225 years ago, provided for the young country’s readiness in case the British tried to regain control and arms were muskets. Yet many citizens cite this amendment as their right to have weapons designed for today’s battlefields, and some believe they will need to use those weapons when “… they’re going to declare martial law so they can take our guns away.” Energy generated by those thoughts and feelings not only adds momentum to the proliferation of weapons, it is manifesting a standoff because it’s conflicting with energy directed toward ending violence and achieving a world at peace.

By no means is that the only resistance factor, but its deterrence to an awakened society needs to be recognized. What is greatly heartening is, as vibratory levels keep rising, increasingly people will become enlightened and eagerly welcome progressive changes.

“Would you please be so kind as to ask Matthew about the flat earth and the firmament as mentioned in the ancient scriptures and also, in the bible.” We say that individuals who long ago recorded their celestial observations did so without the knowledge that a solar system with one flat planet amidst the spheres defies universal laws of physics. The belief that Earth is flat gives no credence to your scientific knowledge, and it is the same with the belief that a few thousand years ago God created Earth in six days.

We also have been asked about the “New Earth,” described as a pristine planet where light beings will be transported while the dark ones stay on the “first” Earth to continue battling and devastating the environment. Eons ago in linear time the soul Gaia chose to incarnate as a planet, which somewhere along the line came to be called Earth, and she has no intention of abandoning her body or occupying two. Your technology, which has been suppressed and misused by the Illuminati, and the advanced technology that your universal family will bring when they can safely join you, will restore Earth to her original Eden self. It is her destiny to once again be a healthy, beauteous, peaceful homeland for all of her residents.

Lighted beings throughout this universe honor your steadfast service that is bringing ever nearer that wondrous era, and we are with you in loving spirit all along your journey.

LOVE and PEACE

Suzanne Ward

Website: The Matthew Books

Email: suzy@matthewbooks.com

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