31/08/2017 BBC Business Live

This is Business Live from BBC News with Ben Thompson and Sally Bundock.

President Trump promises to reform America's tax code -

but will it be enough to stop US firms stashing cash overseas?

Live from London, that's our top story on Thursday 31st August.

Top US companies are keeping $2.5 trillion in profits abroad,

so can President Trump persuade them to bring it back to

Also in the programme, India's illegal cash crackdown fails -

we're live in Mumbai to find out why.

And a better-than-expected growth figures in the United States and

better manufacturing figures in China have boosted growth markets.

You may have heard of Fin Tech but have you heard of Phil Tech?

We're going to get the inside track on how the boss of PlayMob using

And as airport currency rates hit a new low in the UK,

We want to know where do you buy your currency

And if anyone tells us they buy their holiday cash at the airport,

you are banned from the programme! We start today in the US

in Missouri, where President Trump will lay out the details

of his planned tax reforms. He described the current tax rules

as "self-destructive" - they haven't been reformed

for 30 years. He's calling for a more competitive

system to boost jobs and wages, repeating his promise to cut

America's corporate On paper, the US corporation tax

rate is one of the highest But if you take into account

various tax breaks, many top US firms pay a bit less -

on average, 28.6%. That's still much

higher than the 25% rate in China, 19% in the UK and just

12.5% in Ireland. That's why many top US

firms have their overseas And that's meant a staggering

$2.5 trillion worth of profits are channelled overseas by top US

companies to avoid And with the US national debt

spiralling towards $20 trillion, would cutting taxes boost

the economy and tempt US firms Or would it just do more damage

to the government's finances? Speaking on Wednesday, the US

President explained why he believes Our self-destructive tax code

cost Americans millions and millions of jobs,

trillions of dollars and billions of hours spent

on compliance and paperwork. And some countries have

an unbelievably low tax, China and some others that

are highly competitive and They are taking us,

frankly, to the cleaners. John Weeks is the Professor Emeritus

of Economics at SOAS He's here to give us his take on

this story, and were as we just heard, President Trump with his

ideas, his promises, but when will we see a concrete change, do you

think? I think the first point to make, as a famous US jury said,

taxes are the price we pay for civilisation, and the most liveable

countries are the ones with a high taxes, Denmark, Sweden, so on. The

USA has very low taxes, people can draw their own conclusion from that.

The second point is that tax cuts for the middle-class will have a

trivial impact on their incomes. The problem with the class incomes is

their slow growth, the amount that tax would be cut would have very

little impact. And third, cutting the corporate income tax, the main

consequence of that would be to redistribute income to shareholders.

Ronald Reagan tried the same thing almost 40 years ago, and it did not

reduce overseas remittances, and this word, either. So you have

explained some of the reasons why the change in the tax code would not

benefit the US economy, so the issue of any traction on Capitol Hill for

President Trump trying to put through change? I think that

President Trump is an unusual president in that he has a a lot of

support in Congress who may agree with him in ideological, but they

don't like him personally, famous cases such as Senator John McCain.

So I think it is quite possible some bill will go through, but it will

not be the builder Tron proposes, it will be one that is drawn up

probably in the Senate in with the leaders of the house. This isn't

unique to the United States, the debate about cutting taxes to boost

growth and vice versa. There is some truth in cutting taxes many more

money flows into Government cough is because business is more productive.

They might not bring back a lot from abroad, but they create jobs and

wealth if taxes are lower. That is a variation of the argument that has

lower taxes mean more tax revenue, but the terrible evidence that is

very weak. Also the miracle evidence that cutting taxes stimulates growth

is quite weak. So it is possible, but it is likely that we won't get a

systemic demonstration of that. Ten or 15 years ago, you wouldn't have

had the Congressional budget office do a study on the likely impact, and

I have not seen such a study, and I don't believe that the office has

been invited to do that. We will keep a close I on that. Thank you

for your time today. President Trump has just kicked off his tour with

tax reform top of the agenda, so we will keep track on how it goes.

Let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news.

The French government is due to reform labour laws later today. The

measures will be a big test for President in manual macron who is

facing protests next month, although one of the biggest unions has

decided it will not take part. The new boss of Uber,

Dara Khosrowshahi, has told staff he will change the company's culture

and may take it public The taxi hailing app is trying

to recover from a string of crises that saw chief executive

and co-founder Travis Mr Khosrowshahi is the former boss

of online travel company Expedia. I got his name right the second time

around! The troubled Japanese giant Toshiba

has missed a self-imposed deadline of signing a deal

to sell its memory chip unit. The company's board has been meeting

to review a $17bn offer from Western Digital and a revised

last-minute offer of $18bn from Bain Capital -

which brough in Apple to help Activity in China's factories

sped up in August - suggesting the world's

second-largest economy may still be The Purchasing Manager's Index

unexpectedly rose to 51.7 - when economists had predicted

a marginal decline. I am just not going to try and say

it. We just have to practice it over and over. I have a feeling we will

say the name a lot, the new boss of Uber there. Now, let's talk about

India. Was India's crackdown

on the black market a failure? The central bank says 99% of banned

500 and 1000 rupee notes Explain this for us. Why did they

ban certain banknotes, and now it seems they are all back in

circulation anyway? In November last year, this was a surprise decision

by the Indian Government, where they decided to ban 86% of the currency,

all high-value currency notes to be banned overnight, and the reason for

that was they wanted to crack down on black money, money for which a

taxes not been paid. They wanted to crack down on tax evaders and

corruption. Internal estimates were that about $60 billion will not come

back to the system, and this will be regarded as black money which was

floating in the system. But now the central bank has come back and said,

actually 99% of those notes of comeback, and that means that

analysts are saying the policy was a failure, because if 99% of the notes

are back, only $3 billion were recouped, and that is not worth it

for the problems it caused. That is an interesting story on why

sometimes that just doesn't work. Let me show you the numbers.

Shares in Tokyo ending up after the better-than-expected

growth figures in the US gave a boost to confidence.

In Europe, the talk is still of the strength

The debate about what central banks might do. Can the Bank of England

afford a weak pound? We will talk about that more in the moment, but

first let's head to the United States and Michelle Fleury.

Wall Street will continue to play close attention to the devastating

In a show of support, the New York Stock Exchange

investors can chew over pending home sales data for July.

The index focuses on houses where a contract has been signed,

from the country's worst housing collapse has been uneven.

Forecasters see pending sales rising again, 0.4% in July.

But that doesn't appear to have helped sales

of existing homes in July, which fell sharply for

Large declines in the north-east and midwest outweighed sales

the Federal Reserve's preferred method of inflation -

is expected to be positive after second quarter growth

was revised up to 3% for the first time since early 2015.

Joining us is Jane Sydenham from Rathbone Investment Management.

Interesting, because Michelle touching on the upwards revision of

GDP in the States, and she is looking ahead to the numbers we are

going to get later today. It is all looking good for the US, and we

mentioned China numbers better-than-expected as well. It is

all looking better. We all got worried in the first quarter of the

year, there was a slowdown in the US and indications of that elsewhere,

but it looks as though the momentum is picking up again. The consumer

still seems to be spending money, which is key. The revision was

related to that. And given that 70% of the US economy, that is

important. And that may be why factories in China in August had a

better month? Absolutely. Let's talk about currency quickly. This

sterling- euro parity creeping closer. This is twofold, the weak

pound and the strong euro, and there was hope that we might hear

something from the European Central Bank about whether they can afford a

strong euro in the longer term, but central banks don't tend to get

involved in the early stages. If it is a persistent problem, they might.

They don't, and what we have to bear in mind is Europe has had such a

difficult time in terms of growth, finally we are starting to see some

positive growth, so the last thing the central bank wants to do is to

try to intervene when we are finally beginning to see some positive

signs. At this point in time I doubt it will be a priority. Thank you for

now. I wanted to ask more about the markets, but we are being good

because there is so much more to fit in this programme, including:

We meet the tech entrepreneur putting her love of

computer games to good use - for charity.

You're with Business Live from BBC News.

UK betting firm 888 has been accused of failing to block access from

customers who self excluded, and find ?7.8 million. Sean Farrington

is joining us now from Salford with more information. Tell us more about

what is finest specifically for. It is about this self exclusion. If you

were gambling online, 888 is a lot roulette, poker, bingo, and if you

thought you don't want to be able to access your account for whatever

reason, you can tick a box somewhere, let them know, please

freeze my account, don't let me access it, and that will help you

out. But 7000 customers over a period of year said they wanted to

be self excluded but were still able to access their accounts, so the

Commission has effectively find 888 nearly ?8 million for this, saying

not only did they have the technical hitch that allowed it to happen, but

they didn't pick it up which meant ?3.5 million was deposited by those

customers, and gambled over and over to an amount of ?50 million that

year. It is a strange trend, because we talked yesterday about credit

card companies raising limits for people, and it is vulnerable

customers most likely to see that access granted to them when they

have said they do want it. The various authorities have been

looking at the gambling sector in this area for awhile now. Earlier in

the year we had the Competition and Markets Authority looking at the

wider sector about initial offers, those offers you might see that say

put ?100 with us and we will double that for you if you better certain

amount of time, but question marks over how long they have been holding

onto the money. So alongside this fine for 888 today is the gambling

sector being under pressure from those authorities to clean up their

act and to make it better for those vulnerable customers in particular.

Thank you, Sean Farrington in Salford.

On our website, details about Toshiba. They were supposed to have

reached a deal to sell their lucrative chip business. It has not

made any agreement with the three parties it is in talks with at the

moment. So Toshiba are once again failing to deliver on a key

deadline. Our top story: President Trump has

begun a speaking tour aimed at building support

for his planned tax reforms. In an address in Springfield,

Missouri, Mr Trump said he aimed to reform America's tax code

fundamentally for the first time A quick look at how

the markets are faring. I want to mention a big loser in

Paris today. Carrefour has issued a profits warning, which has come as a

surprise. Its shares are down and it has been downgraded by JP Morgan. A

pretty tough time for Carrefour. A big, old-fashioned retailer,

struggling with very hot competition. Many retailers in this

country and in the states are experiencing the same. Now,

something entirely different. Well, it's philanthropic

technology, apparently. Putting technology to

use for good causes. And our next guest

is doing just that, Jude Ower's company Playmob develops

advertising campaigns for charities within video games and then targets

players with those adverts. Her business has reached over

150 million gamers worldwide so far. And in total, the initiative has

raised over $1 million. Various beneficiaries

include WWF and Oxfam. She is here with us. My kids play a

lot of these games that you target, so explain how you help charities in

that situation? There are two ways our platform works, and it is either

by connecting an inapt purchase so a player can support our cause, or the

brand can sponsor the content and the percentage of that spending goes

back to our cause and we track the impact so you can see that by

purchasing the item or completely that level, you are providing a meal

or planting a tree or providing water. I immediately thought to

myself, with all my kids and the stuff they play, I make sure the

in-app purchase is switched off as they can't spend. That doesn't help

you. Well, the average age of gamers is 35, so it's not just kids that

play. The average demographic of a social game is a woman in her

mid-40s. So a lot of kids' games, you can switch off the in-app

purchase, but only a small percentage of revenue would come

from that. Only 3% of gamers spend on in-app purchases. So there is a

big opportunity for brands to spend on media in games. Digital

advertising by 2020 is set to become $20 billion, and 25% of that is

spent in game, so there is a big opportunity for brands to the part

of existing games, which we can take a percentage off to give to charity,

and the player doesn't have to spend money. It is like the player taking

action like completing a level, and the money goes back to the cause.

What will it look like if a game has this sort of content? Right now,

there was a game called and we shot and you can buy a baby shark and you

will get a message saying if you why this item, you will be supporting

sharks in the real world. You can see the impact you will make. Or if

it is a branded level, say you are playing a game like angry birds, you

get to the end of the level you are playing and a new level will appear,

which could be about protecting the oceans or the environment or

endangered species. Do people want to feel they are being sold to in

that way? If you play, it is for enjoyment. Do you feel like you are

being sold to do if branded content is in the game? No. This is purpose

driven marketing. It is talking to human values. At the start of the

year, the charities aid foundation did a study of demos and 87% said

they think games are perfectly placed to raise awareness of social

issues. We see this happening with millennials in generation Z. They

are not tech savvy, but socially conscious too. Your background is

pretty impressive. You have got your MBE already. 2015, you were named in

the top 100 women in tech. The list is long. Ben and I both said that we

are always told it is tough for women in technology. Is that your

experience? We meet a lot of women in tech because of what we do as a

living, so we don't know. I have been in gaming for 17 years, so it

is difficult for me to add to that as it is a world I have already

known. It is a friendly community. It is male dominated, but it is

getting better. The number of women in the games industry has doubled in

about eight years. We are about 22% women in the industry. But I have

heard of examples where if I am going to a meeting, people I have

not met think I am a man because I am called Jude. I have not come

across problems in gaming, but in wider tech, there are comments like,

it must be easier for you to raise money because you have a rich

husband. That would make me extremely cross. I was more

determined to raise the money after that! All of this came to light

recently with that Google memo that then went all around the world

suggesting that women can't work in tech because they are wired

differently. And Google sacked the employee who sent that memo. You

have written about your view of that. You think they were right to

sack him. I think so. We have to fix the problem. By Google making an

example of this person, it says it was the wrong thing to do. We have

to tackle the unconscious bias which is the root of the problem. We can

put more women into the industry, but it is our perceptions that have

to change. Thanks for coming in. Fascinating to hear about Playmobil

and your background. In a minute, we will look at the business pages.

Before that, a reminder of how you can get in touch with us. The

Business Live pages where you can stay up-to-date with all the

breaking news. You can get insight from our team of editors around the

world. And we want to hear from you too. Get involved on the BBC

Business Live web page. We are also on Twitter and Facebook. Business

Live, on TV and online, whenever you need to know. And our viewers are a

savvy lot if you go by the tweets about where you get your holiday

money. Not at the airport, the worst place. James says, I do it on my

smartphone. Another says, I use a special cover card which doesn't

charge fees. Another says, I am on holiday now and I got my money from

a department store online. It offered next they click and select

the Jane Sydenham is joining

us again to discuss. game is joining us again to select

and pages. I guess his forces going in the direction. On the one hand,

Emmanuel Macron wants to free up employment practices in France which

have historically been a rigid. The other hand, that is making life

worse for delivery drivers who feel that they don't have many rights.

But the site but changes in levels are cheaper and more flexible to

move around. But there was a suggestion they could lose out.

There is a fear that arise they have be further diminished and don't feel

well protected. It is interesting that that should be in the news on

the same day we are talking about Uber looking to go public.

Absolutely. But it may be a long way away.

We got woken up by some heavy showers this morning across

north-western parts of England, West Wales, some thunderstorms as well.

But for many of us today, it is a day of sunshine and showers. Some of

those showers will be