MEP attacks EU's corporation tax plans

13 October 2008

Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister has welcomed the publication by the ‘Bruges Group’ of a thorough study analysing the EU's attempt to control the taxation of businesses through a policy known as the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). This is something which the EU Commission has been peddling since 2001 and which it hopes to advance in a legislative proposal in the coming months.

Commenting Jim Allister said, “It is a classic EU policy, which the European Commission hopes will create a pan-European tax authority, a one-size-fits-none approach that benefits the bureaucrats at the cost of the ordinary taxpayer.
 
As the Bruges Group have pointed out, the EU’s latest tax power grab would reduce the GDP of the fragile UK economy by £73 billion over the next 10 years, equal to each UK inhabitant paying £1,200 each or the equivalent of British taxpayers having to pay an extra 1.5p in the basic rate of income tax for each of those years.
 
Brussels plan to control corporation tax would also harm the business environment in the UK. It would force up corporate tax bills, greatly add to tax complexity and massively increase the administrative burden that British businesses are forced to deal with. Forcing UK industries, as the Bruges Group says, to join the 'Taxodus' and leave Britain. Furthermore, the CCCTB would mean that the UK would lose a total of £58.4 billion of investment over 10 years.”
 

The Bruges Group, formed to mark Margaret Thatcher’s famous speech in 1988 in Bruges, against EU centralisation, spearheads the intellectual battle against the notion of "ever–closer Union" in Europe
Click here to read the full analysis online
<http://www.brugesgroup.com/CorporateTax.pdf>  

EU Parliament