Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-12-Speech-1-148"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20051212.18.1-148"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, the subject of our debate today is a single base for taxation, something that is, in principle, surely to be welcomed, certainly from the point of view of small and medium-sized businesses and particularly in terms of making life in a single internal market easier for them.
We cannot always draw a strict distinction between the tax base on the one hand and the tax rate on the other, as the tax base has undoubted effects on the classification of taxes and on the internal balances, and that is something that certainly has to be borne in mind when considering the Commission’s next steps. We do not want some sort of approximation of the various tax systems introduced through the back door, and I think the Commission has a vested interest in that not happening if it is to make headway with the Member States.
Finally, I want to say – and I am speaking on behalf of my group when I say this – that we are, without doubt, in favour of fiscal competition. You need only imagine what would happen if we were to lock the 25 European finance ministers in a room and let them out only when the white smoke had appeared and they had agreed on tax harmonisation; if we were to do that, we would be turning Europe into a high-tax region, and that is not what we want.
Before I sit down, there is just one other point I would like to make, and it is in the form of a question, namely: how do we arrive at a single tax base? The answer invariably given to that is that we should draw on the international accounting systems. I do not propose to address the question of whether these systems are good or bad or of how they are implemented, but it is, in any case, a process on which European policy-making has scarcely any influence. It is all the more extraordinary that politicians should recommend this system as a guide to how to bring in a single tax base. If this were to be done – and I warn this House, the Council, and the Commission against it – it would mean that policy-makers would have capitulated and surrendered essential competences in this area, and that cannot be the road down which we go."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples