Tax treatment of cooperatives and EU State aid policy

En los últimos años, la Comisión Europea y el Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea han puesto diversas medidas fiscales aplicadas a las cooperativas bajo sospecha de ser ayudas incompatibles con el mercado interno. La cuestión principal a responder es en qué casos el tratamiento fiscal especial de las cooperativas constituye ayuda prohibida por el Artículo 107(1) TFUE. Hay una clara contradicción entre el desarrollo de la promoción del modelo cooperativo por parte de la UE y la estricta aplicación del Artículo 107(1) TFUE a las cooperativas y su tratamiento fiscal. Una forma de conseguir seguridad jurídica en esta cuestión sería que la Comisión modificara su Comunicación relativa a la normativa de ayudas estatales y la fiscalidad directa de las empresas, reconociendo la posibilidad de que las medidas fiscales de las cooperativas que actúan en el mercado estén justificadas por la naturaleza o economía del sistema fiscal, bajo ciertas condiciones.; In the recent years, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice have brought many tax measures applied to cooperatives under the threat to be declared aid incompatible with the internal market. The key question to be answered is in which cases special tax treatment of cooperatives constitutes prohibited State aid under Article 107(1) TFEU. There is a clear contradiction between the development of the promotion of the cooperative model by the EU and the strict application of Article 107(1) TFEU on cooperatives and their tax treatment. A way of bringing legal certainty on this issue would be that he Commission amended its Notice on State aid rules and direct business taxation, by recognizing that tax measures applied to cooperatives acting in the market may be justified by the nature or general scheme of the tax system, under certain conditions.; Azken urteotan, Europako Batzordeak eta Europako Batasunako Justizia Auzitegiak kooperatibei aplikatutako hainbat neurri fiskal auzitan jarri dituzte, barruko merkatuarekin bateraezinak direlakoan. Erantzun beharreko galdera nagusia da zein kasutan kooperatiben trataera fiskal bereziak Europako Batasunako Funtzionamendu Tratatuako (EBFT) 107(1) artikuluak debekaturiko laguntza diren. Kontraesan nabarmena dago EBk eredu kooperatiboa sustatu eta kooperatibei eta beren trataera fiskalari EBFTko 107(1) artikulua modu hertsian aplikatzearen artean. Gai honetan segurtasun juridikoa lortzeko, Batzordeak Estatuko laguntzei eta enpresen fiskalitate zuzenari buruzko Komunikazioa aldatu zezakeen, merkatuan diharduten kooperatiben neurri fiskalak, sistema fiskalaren izaera edo ekonomiagatik justifikatutzat joz, egoera jakin batzuetan

Tax treatment of cooperatives and EU State aid policy

En los últimos años, la Comisión Europea y el Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea han puesto diversas medidas fiscales aplicadas a las cooperativas bajo sospecha de ser ayudas incompatibles con el mercado interno. La cuestión principal a responder es en qué casos el tratamiento fiscal especial de las cooperativas constituye ayuda prohibida por el Artículo 107(1) TFUE. Hay una clara contradicción entre el desarrollo de la promoción del modelo cooperativo por parte de la UE y la estricta aplicación del Artículo 107(1) TFUE a las cooperativas y su tratamiento fiscal. Una forma de conseguir seguridad jurídica en esta cuestión sería que la Comisión modificara su Comunicación relativa a la normativa de ayudas estatales y la fiscalidad directa de las empresas, reconociendo la posibilidad de que las medidas fiscales de las cooperativas que actúan en el mercado estén justificadas por la naturaleza o economía del sistema fiscal, bajo ciertas condiciones.; In the recent years, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice have brought many tax measures applied to cooperatives under the threat to be declared aid incompatible with the internal market. The key question to be answered is in which cases special tax treatment of cooperatives constitutes prohibited State aid under Article 107(1) TFEU. There is a clear contradiction between the development of the promotion of the cooperative model by the EU and the strict application of Article 107(1) TFEU on cooperatives and their tax treatment. A way of bringing legal certainty on this issue would be that he Commission amended its Notice on State aid rules and direct business taxation, by recognizing that tax measures applied to cooperatives acting in the market may be justified by the nature or general scheme of the tax system, under certain conditions.; Azken urteotan, Europako Batzordeak eta Europako Batasunako Justizia Auzitegiak kooperatibei aplikatutako hainbat neurri fiskal auzitan jarri dituzte, barruko merkatuarekin bateraezinak direlakoan. Erantzun beharreko galdera nagusia da zein kasutan kooperatiben trataera fiskal bereziak Europako Batasunako Funtzionamendu Tratatuako (EBFT) 107(1) artikuluak debekaturiko laguntza diren. Kontraesan nabarmena dago EBk eredu kooperatiboa sustatu eta kooperatibei eta beren trataera fiskalari EBFTko 107(1) artikulua modu hertsian aplikatzearen artean. Gai honetan segurtasun juridikoa lortzeko, Batzordeak Estatuko laguntzei eta enpresen fiskalitate zuzenari buruzko Komunikazioa aldatu zezakeen, merkatuan diharduten kooperatiben neurri fiskalak, sistema fiskalaren izaera edo ekonomiagatik justifikatutzat joz, egoera jakin batzuetan

Improving early design stage timing modeling in multicore based real-time systems

This paper presents a modelling approach for the timing behavior of real-time embedded systems (RTES) in early design phases. The model focuses on multicore processors - accepted as the next computing platform for RTES - and in particular it predicts the contention tasks suffer in the access to multicore on-chip shared resources. The model presents the key properties of not requiring the application's source code or binary and having high-accuracy and low overhead. The former is of paramount importance in those common scenarios in which several software suppliers work in parallel implementing different applications for a system integrator, subject to different intellectual property (IP) constraints. Our model helps reducing the risk of exceeding the assigned budgets for each application in late design stages and its associated costs.This work has received funding from the European Space Agency under Project Reference AO=17722=13=NL=LvH, and has also been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant TIN2015-65316-P. Jaume Abella has been partially supported by the MINECO under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship number RYC-2013-14717.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Contention-aware performance monitoring counter support for real-time MPSoCs

Tasks running in MPSoCs experience contention delays when accessing MPSoC’s shared resources, complicating task timing analysis and deriving execution time bounds. Understanding the Actual Contention Delay (ACD) each task suffers due to other corunning tasks, and the particular hardware shared resources in which contention occurs, is of prominent importance to increase confidence on derived execution time bounds of tasks. And, whenever those bounds are violated, ACD provides information on the reasons for overruns. Unfortunately, existing MPSoC designs considered in real-time domains offer limited hardware support to measure tasks’ ACD losing all these potential benefits. In this paper we propose the Contention Cycle Stack (CCS), a mechanism that extends performance monitoring counters to track specific events that allow estimating the ACD that each task suffers from every contending task on every hardware shared resource. We build the CCS using a set of specialized low-overhead Performance Monitoring Counters for the Cobham Gaisler GR740 (NGMP) MPSoC – used in the space domain – for which we show CCS’s benefits.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Space Agency under contracts 4000109680, 4000110157 and NPI 4000102880, and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Spain under contract TIN-2015-65316-P. Jaume Abella has been partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Ramon y Cajal postdoctoral fellowship number RYC-2013-14717.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Competitiveness in Insular Regions: Case of Isla Grande in the Archapelago of Islas Del Rosario, Cartagena, Colombia

This article is based on a study whose objective was focused on identifying the variables and key actors with the greatest impact on the competitiveness of a large island in the island region of the Rosario Islands in Cartagena, Colombia. The implemented methodology is exploratory, based on the qualitative paradigm, and had three phases. The first was developed through a competency diagnosis that was achieved from observations and discussions with the community. The second phase was the identification of the actors to determine how they affect the community. The final phase included the identification of probabilistic cross impacts. The main findings of the research include that the main external factor is the sociodemographic variable. In addition, the environmental variable directly influences competitiveness. The following internal variables of the large island community were identified: ecotourism, poverty and misery index, exploitation of natural resources, social innovation, tourism potential and generational change. Finally, it is necessary to perform immediate actions in favour of the development of competencies. Some of these actions include promoting the destination as ecotourism and developing campaigns to raise awareness of the importance of the island for natural resources and that these resources should be conserved

Forbes Global 2000: Un análisis comparativo entre compañías de EEUU

con base en la publicación “Forbes Global 2000”la cual presenta el ranking de las 2000 compañíasmás grandes a nivel mundial. Se tomó como basepara el estudio solamente aquellas empresas pertenecientesa EEUU. El ranking está elaborado conbase en cuatro variables: ventas, utilidades, activosy valor de mercado, y una quinta variable que secalculó a partir de las anteriores, el ROA. La metodologíautilizada condujo a hacer uso de la regresiónlineal, seguido de un análisis de componentes principalesy un análisis de conglomerados. Los resultadospermiten evidenciar que hay tres clustersde compañías con similitudes internas y diferenciassignificativas entre grupos. El grupo 3 contiene unmenor número de compañías con altos niveles deventas, utilidades, activos, valor de mercado y ROA,sin embargo, el comportamiento de estas variablesentre algunas empresas no es completamente homogéneo,pues existen claras diferencias entre actividadesde servicios financieros frente a empresasde alta tecnología o petroleras

SWOT Analysis Approach for Advancement of Waste-to-energy Cluster in Latvia

AbstractIt is important to improve the communication and collaboration of waste-to-energy stakeholders in Latvia to ensure sustainable economic and environmental development and promote innovation and local technology development. Therefore, implementation of a waste-to-energy cluster in Latvia has been proposed. The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the organizational structure and SWOT analysis of five existing and one potential waste-to-energy cluster and develop suggestions for improved organization of the developing Latvian cluster. The analytical part includes SWOT analysis of the proposed Latvian waste-to-energy cluster and a comparison of its results with five SWOT analyses for existing European waste-to-energy clusters involved in the project COOLSWEEP

Clock/Sleep-Dependent Learning and Memory in Male 3xTg-AD Mice at Advanced Disease Stages and Extrinsic Effects of Huprine X and the Novel Multitarget Agent AVCRI104P3

A new hypothesis highlights sleep-dependent learning/memory consolidation and regards the sleep-wake cycle as a modulator of beta-amyloid and tau Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathologies. Sundowning behavior is a common neuropsychiatric symptom (NPS) associated with dementia. Sleep fragmentation resulting from disturbances in sleep and circadian rhythms in AD may have important consequences on memory processes and exacerbate the other AD-NPS. The present work studied the effect of training time schedules on 12-month-old male 3xTg-AD mice modeling advanced disease stages. Their performance in two paradigms of the Morris water maze for spatial-reference and visual-perceptual learning and memory were found impaired at midday, after 4 h of non-active phase. In contrast, early-morning trained littermates, slowing down from their active phase, exhibited better performance and used goal-directed strategies and non-search navigation described for normal aging. The novel multitarget anticholinesterasic compound AVCRI104P3 (0.6 umol/kg, 21 days i.p.) exerted stronger cognitive benefits than its in vitro equipotent dose of AChEI huprine X (0.12 umol/kg, 21 days i.p.). Both compounds showed streamlined drug effectiveness, independently of the schedule. Their effects on anxiety-like behaviors were moderate. The results open a question of how time schedules modulate the capacity to respond to task demands and to assess/elucidate new drug effectiveness

Rickettsia monacensis and Human Disease, Spain

We identified Rickettsia monacensis as a cause of acute tickborne rickettsiosis in 2 humans. Its pathogenic role was assessed by culture and detection of the organism in patients’ blood samples. This finding increases the number of recognized human rickettsial pathogens and expands the known geographic distribution of Mediterranean spotted fever–like cases

Electrostatic potential and valence modulation in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 thin films

The Mn valence in thin film La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 was studied as a function of film thickness in the range of 1–16 unit cells with a combination of non-destructive bulk and surface sensitive X-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques. Using a layer-by-layer valence model, it was found that while the bulk averaged valence hovers around its expected value of 3.3, a significant deviation occurs within several unit cells of the surface and interface. These results were supported by first principles calculations. The surface valence increases to up to Mn3.7+, whereas the interface valence reduces down to Mn2.5+. The change in valence from the expected bulk value is consistent with charge redistribution due to the polar discontinuity at the film-substrate interface. The comparison with theory employed here illustrates how this layer-by-layer valence evolves with film thickness and allows for a deeper understanding of the microscopic mechanisms at play in this effect. These results offer insight on how the two-dimensional electron gas is created in thin film oxide alloys and how the magnetic ordering is reduced with dimensionality