Tax-news.com – Endeavouring to assuage fears and re-establish public confidence in the wake of one-day nationwide strikes, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that local business tax or ‘taxe professionnelle’ will finally be abolished in 2010.

Expressing his determination to uphold his predecessor Jacques Chirac’s promise to end the highly controversial tax, President Sarkozy has underlined the importance of the measure – vital to maintaining industry in France and ultimately to the preservation of jobs, despite a total cost to the state estimated at EUR8bn.

Created in 1975 – ironically by the then Prime Minister Chirac – business tax forms one of four direct local taxes collected by councils, and represents around half of their tax revenue.

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Tampa Tribune – Yahoo is recounting the shareholder vote for its board of directors after discovering that a tabulating firm failed to register the opposition of a major investor.

The revision won’t change the outcome of Friday’s election, which retained Yahoo’s incumbent directors despite shareholder anger about the board’s handling of a now-withdrawn $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp.

However, the change will add a little more punch to the protest against the Yahoo board. The directors re-elected last week had been supported by at least 78 percent of the votes cast, based on the original results.

"It’s important for Yahoo’s board to understand there is still pressure on them," said Eric Jackson, a hedge fund manager who represents a group of stockholders with about 3.2 million Yahoo shares. "I thought Yahoo’s board was kind of let off the hook last week when they didn’t really deserve to be."

Capital Research Global Investors, which owns a 6.2 percent stake in Yahoo, lodged the inquiry Monday that resulted in the election recount. Convinced that its opposition to Yahoo’s board wasn’t reflected in last week’s vote, Capital Research demanded an audit from Broadridge Financial Solutions, the processing firm responsible for casting its ballot.

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New York Post- Taxpayers are all but certain to take a hit on the securities the Federal Reserve accepted as part of JPMorgan Chase’s takeover of Bear Stearns, according to a report by a hedge fund that is an investor in JPMorgan.

The reports comes as the Fed said last week said it valued the bundle of assets it accepted as collateral for the $28.8 billion loan at $28.9 billion as of June 26.

That’s a drop of 3.7 percent from earlier this year.

JPMorgan is on the hook for just the first $1.15 billion of value below the loan amount – with the taxpayers having to make good for any additional deterioration in value of the collateral.

"We expect that the loss will exceed the $1 billion exposure for JPM," the hedge fund said in the report, a copy of which has been seen by The Post on the basis of not identifying the name of the fund.

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