Ireland And UK Blocking EU Tax Harmonisation Plans

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

05 November 2002

Recent reports have revealed that Ireland and the United Kingdom are part of a group of countries blocking efforts to further harmonise EU taxation.

Alongside several EU hopefuls and other EU members, such as Sweden and Finland, the two member states have come out against measures designed to impose a standardised tax system on EU countries.

Speaking last week, Chairman of the Economic Governance committee tasked with discussing the issue of tax harmonisation, Klaus Hansch admitted that the group was so divided that it was unable to propose any 'thorough structural or institutional reform'.

Reporting on the European Convention's plenary session last week, during which Mr Hansch presented the economic governance committee's preliminary findings, the EU Observer news service revealed that:

'A majority of the group was clear that while unanimous voting may be scrapped in areas such as energy and environment tax, it was only so that minimum standards and not an EU-wide tax could be introduced. Income tax, one of the last bastions of member state sovereignty, is not to be touched.'

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