Canada plans to fight back if tar sands labeled dirty oil

TORONTO — Canada has threatened to take Europe to the World Trade Organization if it singles out the country’s oil sands as dirty oil, but officials said Tuesday such action wouldn’t affect free-trade negotiations with the European Union.

An EU committee is set to vote Thursday on a proposed fuel-quality directive that labels Canada’s oil sands as more polluting than oil from other parts of the world. The directive aims to curb emissions from transport fuels by 10 percent. If approved, it will go to the full European parliament.

Canada’s western province of Alberta has the world’s third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, with more than 170 billion barrels

Canada doesn’t sell oil to Europe, but government and industry officials fear the dirty-oil label would set a bad precedent.

“It risks sullying our reputation in an unfair way and could hurt us in other markets,” said Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver. “We will take action if necessary, but I’m hoping it won’t get passed.”

Oliver said a number of EU countries are opposed to the dirty-oil label, including Britain and France, and they think there’s a reasonable chance the directive won’t get passed.

Treasury to release outline of corporate taxes overhaul

WASHINGTON — A senior administration official says the Treasury Department is planning to release information today about its forthcoming plan to overhaul the corporate tax system.

The top corporate tax rate is 35 percent, second-highest in the world behind only Japan. Few companies pay that rate because they take advantage of tax breaks.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress last week that the administration would propose eliminating some tax breaks.

Obama has said he would lower the tax rate, but used no figures. He has said he would eliminate deductions for U.S. companies that move jobs or profits overseas.

Banks loosen credit, allow more to open card accounts

NEW YORK — More people opened new credit card accounts last year as the banking industry began to loosen standards that it tightened during the recession.

The number of new cards issued to consumers rose 14 percent in 2011 to about 42.3 million, according to data provided by TransUnion. And about a quarter of those cards – roughly 10.7 million – went to people with less-than-stellar credit histories, TransUnion said.

The combination of tight competition for top-rated consumers and the improvement in the economy is encouraging banks to take a closer look at lending to consumers who made a few mistakes in the past. This is the second straight quarter that subprime consumers are getting a larger slice of the credit pie than they did during the depth of the Great Recession.

Another factor helping make credit more available is that the rate of late payments has fallen dramatically in the past two years. Just 0.78 percent of card holders were late with payments by 90 days or more during the fourth quarter, TransUnion found by culling data from a random sampling of about 21 million credit reports.