Toyota Motor announced on May 8 that its consolidated financial results for the fiscal year ending March 2013 showed net profit of 962.1 billion yen, more than three times that of the previous fiscal year (283.5 billion yen). This was due to the weak yen and cost cutting. Sales rose 18.7% year on year to 22 trillion yen.
Toyota expects a large increase in profits for the fiscal year ending March 2014. The company said that domestic major automakers are seeing a recovery in sales and production following the slump phone number library caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, and that there is strong demand in Asian and American markets. The company also said that sales in China, the world's largest auto market, were sluggish due to territorial disputes, but are now recovering.
The yen has fallen about 20% against the dollar since November last year. This has strengthened the competitiveness of Japanese companies in overseas markets, boosting the yen-equivalent value of foreign currency earned overseas. (c)AFP/Kyoko Hasegawa
A 22-year-old man in Austria has found himself ensnared in an unimaginable bureaucratic entanglement, wrongly charged with a staggering $37 million in taxes. This extraordinary sum, far exceeding any plausible financial liability for someone of his age and presumed professional standing, indicates a severe and deeply troubling error within the Austrian tax system. The incident casts a shadow over the reliability o