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Postmates acqhires Secret CEO David Byttow’s startup Bold
TechCrunch The founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most famous flameouts, anonymous social app Secret, is the new product lead for Postmates’ app. After Secret shut down and gave investors back their money, David Byttow went on to raise a $1 million seed round … |
June 10, 2017 at 09:21PM
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Airlines have been under increased public scrutiny in recent months, following an incident in which a United passenger was violently removed from an overbooked flight.
But a top German carrier wants to give fliers something to smile about.
Lufthansa, the largest airline in Germany, is offering an option that lets people book a flight to a surprise destination. Called the “Lufthansa Surprise,” the deal allows passengers to choose from nine categories — including nature, shopping, and “bromance” — and pick their travel dates.
The airline will only reveal where the passenger is going after they complete their purchase.
Passengers might end up in popular European tourist destinations like Rome, Madrid, and Paris — or have the chance to explore less trafficked cities like Warsaw, Poland; Turin, Italy; or Izmir, Turkey. Customers can opt out of cities, though being selective drives up the cost.
Lufthansa started offering blind bookings in spring 2016. The round-trip flights start at €89 ($99), which is cheaper than the average fare.
“The more flexible you are, the cheaper your flight,” the Lufthansa website says.
Unfortunately, the flights only depart from Munich and Frankfurt airports, so people from other areas would have to spend hundreds more to get Germany if they want a Lufthansa Surprise.
Once a ticket has been purchased through Lufthansa Surprise, no refunds will be given — so if you’re prone to buyer’s remorse, this deal might not be for you.
SEE ALSO: Airlines are starting to offer a luxury perk to the masses
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June 10, 2017 at 09:18PM
from Melia Robinson
June 10, 2017 at 09:16PM
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June 10, 2017 at 09:16PM
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June 08, 2017 at 09:18PM
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Long-distance train travel is a great way to see the natural beauty of a country.
Naturally, taking a train doesn’t have to break the bank. But for anyone interested in splurging on comfort for trips that can last a week or more, there are several ways to ride in style.
Scroll down to see the most luxurious train options out there:
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The Belmond Andea Explorer offers sweeping views of the Peruvian Andes with stops in Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa. The train is South America’s very first luxury sleeper train and comes with a library car and piano bar car.
The price of a one-night itinerary in a double room is $480, according to Travel + Leisure. More specific pricing information is available upon request.
The Rovos Rail has been selling tickets for nearly three decades and offers a variety of trips to places like Cape Town, Victoria Falls, and Durban. Guests can enjoy Champagne and lobster tail in the luxury train, which offers Royal Suites that come with a tub and shower.
The price of a room starts at $1,475 per person.
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is one of the most iconic luxury trains in the world. It features Art Deco interiors, plush fabric, crystal glassware, and a champagne bar.
It’s best known for its classic route from London to Venice, with a stop in Paris. But you can also opt for a journey from Paris to Istanbul or from Istanbul to Venice. Tickets start at roughly $2,500 per person.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
June 08, 2017 at 09:18PM
from Danielle Muoio
The Kansas state legislature voted on Monday to raise taxes in an effort to reduce the state’s massive budget shortfall.
Republican Governor Sam Brownback — who slashed the Kansas business tax rate down to 0% in 2013 as part of the state’s largest-ever tax cuts — quickly vetoed the bill.
But both chambers of the state’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode the Governor’s veto on Tuesday, effectively putting an end to the 2013 tax cuts.
The state legislature’s tax hike will raise $1.2 billion over the next two years through an increase in the individual income tax rate and a repeal of the o% tax rate for pass-through business.
“I think we’ve taken a big step backwards,” Brownback told reporters on Wednesday.
President Trump’s most recent tax proposal similarly aims to reduce the tax burden for businesses by dropping the business tax rate from 35% to 15%. The aim with these types of cuts is to spur economic growth. After all, if businesses have more money in hand, they can, theoretically, hire more people and invest in making new products.
But ask some Kansans and you’ll learn how that kind of tax cut could have serious unintended consequences.
Instead of spurring business investment and job creation, researchers from a number of institutions say it turned more into a “tax avoidance” program. A lot of white-collar workers like law partners, accountants, and doctors stopped taking salaries and instead started claiming the profits of the business. For them, state income tax essentially went from a maximum of 4.6% to nothing. This has led to the ongoing budget crisis.
“Kansas has been an unmitigated budgetary disaster,” Dr Lori McMillan, a tax-law professor at Washburn University, told Business Insider. “It was a very messy, blunt club when a scalpel was needed.”
The economic growth from the tax cuts never materialized. Kansas was saddled with an almost instantaneous budget hole, leaving schools and pensions drastically underfunded. Infrastructure repairs were put on hold. And to deal with a $700 million drop in revenue — almost twice what was predicted — Kansas raised its sales tax, hurting all residents, but especially lower income Kansans.
Kansas has some peculiarities, but the lessons still apply nationally. In the state, a 0% tax rate applied only to “pass-through” businesses, which send their profits directly to the companies’ owners. Before this law, those owners would just pay Kansas’ individual tax rate. The 2012 law effectively created a new category just for them, where they pay nothing.
Nationally, 90% of US companies are pass-throughs, according to the Tax Foundation, so it’s possible Trump’s tax cut would have similar effects. It could also encourage some higher-income workers to become independent contractors rather than remain companies’ employees.
“The logic is simple,” Joseph Rosenberg and Leonard Burman of the Tax Policy Center say. “If wage income is taxed at 33 percent but business income is taxed at 15 percent (as under Trump’s campaign proposal), taxpayers may reduce their tax liability by more than half if they can effectively recharacterize their wage income as business income.”
In other words, someone might stop taking a traditional salary, and instead effectively become a one-person business to save on taxes. But it should be noted that even though people changed the way they file and went out of their way to get the tax cut, they were within the bounds of the law.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback pushed hard for the 2013 tax break. He bet it would help the state’s economy. But the bigger-than-expected budget shortfall has had drastic ripple effects.
It has exacerbated a school-funding crisis. The state’s supreme court in March even called the low level of funding unconstitutional.
Despite widespread criticism, including from within his own party in the legislature, Brownback mostly resisted reversing the tax cuts. The state’s budget director, Shawn Sullivan, who’s appointed by the governor, said that might be changing.
“The goal is to be pro-growth,” Sullivan told Business Insider prior to this week’s legislative actions. “The governor believes the current plan is best, but as the legislature deals with the current situation, he is willing to compromise.”
Sullivan also refutes the validity of some of the economic studies of Kansas completed by the Tax Foundation and academics, saying, “They’ve extrapolated conclusions not borne of the data.”
But the state is still facing massive budget deficits — as much as $1.1 billion through the middle of 2019. Past action by Kansas lawmakers has raised the state’s sales taxes in lieu of changing the tax cuts on business and personal income. Though some take issue with the burden that puts on ordinary Kansans.
“When you pick winners and losers in your tax policy, you only shift the burden of funding the government to others who may be less able to pay,” says McMillan.
Kansas now has one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation at 6.5%, the cigarette tax was recently raised by 79 cents to $1.29, and a new tax was put on vapor products as well, according to the Tax Foundation.
Bernie Koch of the Kansas Economic Progress Council isn’t sure how long that level of sales tax can last.
“The sales tax wasn’t meant to handle that load,” says Koch. “It’s become the largest slice of the pie for Kansas. More than the income tax. I don’t think the legislators ever thought ‘can the sales tax handle this?’”
In February, the state legislature approved a bill that would have repealed the pass-through tax exemption as part of a larger tax overhaul.
Governor Brownback vetoed it.
“I am vetoing it because the legislature failed to fulfill my request that they find savings and efficiencies before asking the people of Kansas for more taxes,” the governor said. “I am vetoing it because Kansas families deserve to keep more of their hard-earned cash.”
Following the veto, the credit-rating agency Moody’s issued a negative outlook for the state.
Trump’s team says its plan might work differently.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the administration “will make sure that there are rules in place so that wealthy people can’t create pass-throughs and use that as a mechanism to avoid paying the tax rate that they should be on the personal side.”
But the big question is, how does he do that? What legal rules can the administration come up with so that tax lawyers and accountants can’t find legal loopholes?
“Kansas is a teaser for how hard it is to budget this kind of tax cut,” McMillan said.
Details of the Trump plan are currently being negotiated with Congress.
Meanwhile, some were wondering if Kansas’ schools would open in the fall. After the state supreme court’s ruling, legislators had to pass some form of tax reform to properly fund the schools.
With school funding tied to the recently passed tax increases, it appears as though that crisis has been averted.
SEE ALSO: ‘Trumponomics,’ in Trump’s own words, comes down to one thing — trade
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June 08, 2017 at 09:18PM
from Raul Hernandez
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BSE asks brokers to submit internal audit report by June 30
Daily News & Analysis Leading stock exchange BSE today directed brokers to submit internal audit report for the half year ended March 31, 2017 by June 30 in electronic form. Non-submission of the report within the cut-off period will attract penalty. All brokers and … |
June 04, 2017 at 09:17PM
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Tesla’s market value recently surpassed Ford’s, and it was a big milestone for the smaller electric-car maker that contends with the traditional auto makers.
But if investors had to buy and hold shares of either one company for three years, those who Morgan Stanley asked would rather own Ford.
Morgan Stanley received 140 responses from investors to four questions on both companies.
“We are quite surprised how high expectations have recovered for Tesla’s Model 3,” said Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley’s lead auto analyst, in a note on Friday.
“On the other hand, [we] were also surprised to see how positive investors appear to be on Ford vis-à-vis Tesla in terms of forward looking share price performance.
Jonas noted that this outcome may be shaped by the fact that most respondents skewed towards the traditional auto industry. The survey result was more evenly split — 34% for Tesla to 33% for Ford — when investors were presented with a third option that was neither company.
The majority of respondents — 26% — said they thought Tesla’s stock would be trading between $200 and $299 a share three years from now. That’s lower than its current level, but leaps above the IPO opening price of $17 a share. Tesla opened at $317.47 on Friday.
Ford shares, meanwhile, fell nearly 40% from when former CEO Mark Fields took over through his departure announcement on Monday. Some analysts noted that the executive changes were made as the board became impatient with the stock’s lackluster performance.
Musk defended the company’s valuation over the longer term in an April tweet. “Tesla is absurdly overvalued if based on the past, but that’s irrelevant,” he said. “A stock price represents risk-adjusted future cash flows.”
Tesla’s valuation came into focus again as its market cap surpassed GM and Ford’s.
“I do believe this market cap is higher than we have any right to deserve,” CEO Elon Musk said in a recent interview with The Guardian, pointing out his company produces just 1% of GM’s total output. “We’re a money losing company,” he added.
SEE ALSO: Amazon is on the verge of hitting $1,000 a share for the first time
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May 26, 2017 at 09:17PM
from Akin Oyedele
