Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-12-Speech-1-146"
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"en.20051212.18.1-146"2
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".
Mr President, one of the principles of good taxation is certainty, both of the bases of assessment and the tax rate. Yet the only certainty about the proposals to harmonise the base for company tax is that they create uncertainty.
If the negotiations follow the pattern of development of the European company statute, for instance, it will be decades before we have a settled position. Continuing changes in tax rates and tax rules and the prospect of future changes are bad for business. In this report, as in early Commission reports on this subject, it is accepted as a matter of faith that the single market must be pursued without question, with the elusive level playing field as the means to achieve it.
If we are to harmonise the base for corporate tax, why insist that tax rates should not be harmonised too? It does not make sense. Like Mr Konrad, I suspect that uniform rates are on the future agenda, despite the denials. There is much to be gained from simplifying tax rules in the individual Member States, particularly the older ones, but this has to be a matter for those Member States. If the Member States see a need for cross-border cooperation on tax matters, this too should be their concern and not that of the Commission or the European Court of Justice.
My recommendation is leave it alone. Then the countries that prosper and attract investment will be those with the lowest tax rates and those with the simplest and least bureaucratic methods of assessment and collection. If taxation is to be made more business friendly, this will be at the initiative of the individual Member States and driven by market forces. I fear that coercion by the European Union is the wrong way to achieve tax reform."@en1
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