eurealist.co.uk

The Press: Brown to veto EU’s tax move “Chancellor Gordon Brown is heading for a bruising clash in Europe … He will veto plans for harmonisation of corporation tax … Among the proposals that will be blocked is a single ‘European Corporate Income Tax’, some of the proceeds of which would go straight to the Commission …” (Financial Mail on Sunday, 10 March 2002)

The Facts: The Commission has not proposed EU tax harmonisation and does not believe it is necessary to fix a minimum corporate tax rate. Member States are free to choose the tax systems they consider most appropriate, provided they respect EU rules. The level of taxation in the EU is a matter for individual Member States to decide. However, the Commission considers that the reform of company taxation in the EU is crucial to achieving the goal of making the Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. In the longer term, companies must be allowed a consolidated corporate tax base for their EU-wide activities to avoid the current costly inefficiencies of 15 separate sets of tax rules.

Notes: Just re-read the Facts

On one hand it says the commission has no plans on the other it says it has?

As we still have a veto on tax the press reports were correct!

Of course as we have discovered since that the ECJ has made rulings which override our government’s position on corporate tax.

Proposals to harmonise the corporate tax system, expressed for the first time in the Neumark Report in 1962,

The European Court of Justice has ruled that direct taxes fall within the competence of EU member states, however, member states must implement this competence without infringing the law of the European Community.

So another mythless myth