According to the Czech Statistical Office, EU’s public expenditure on R&D accounted for 0.7% of EU’s GDP in 2014, compared with 0.8% of GDP in the United States of America and Japan. The Czech public expenditure on R&D (CZK 27bn, i.e. 0.6% of the country’s GDP) amounted to 1% of the EU’s expenditure volume. In the Czech Republic, private entities (80% of them were private companies) received direct state funding worth CZK 3.4bn in 2014, that is one-sixth of the total.

On 6 June, the conference TTIP: What is in it for Companies? will be held in Prague. Impacts of TTIP on SMEs, the latest state of play on SME cooperation between the European Commission and the US Administration, and the US business culture, as well as challenges that companies encounter during their expansion in the US market will be discussed.

If the Ministry of Finance intends to draft a new income tax act, the question is, whether the ambition behind is pure legislative perfectionism or the overall tax policy would be reviewed and revised, too, says Peter Chrenko, Partner, PwC Czech Republic in an interview on evidence-based tax policy as well as BEPS/ATAD projects. Read details inside. Uvnitř rozhovor i v českém jazyce.

The conference TTIP: Win-Win for All? to be held on 30 May in Prague will present the findings of a study on the potential impact of TTIP on the EU by the World Trade Institute (WTI) of the University of Bern, Switzerland. It will also explore some of the opportunities and challenges presented by TTIP for both the EU and the US.