Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-13-Speech-3-180"
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"en.20001213.7.3-180"2
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"I oppose Mrs Torres Marques' call for harmonisation of VAT, but what I would really like to address is the García-Margallo report on e-commerce. While I applaud Mr García-Margallo's heroic efforts on aircraft fuel, I am afraid I cannot agree with his stance on VAT in e-commerce because I think that the Commission's proposal sends out the wrong signal. We should be thinking out ways to encourage e-commerce and not thinking up new ways in which to tax it. The de facto tax-free status of much US e-commerce must have had a tremendous impact in encouraging the new economy and its phenomenal success in the US. This tax is unenforceable, why should we spend the time and the money and the effort on creating a tax that we cannot collect.
The very day a respectable dot.com starts levying VAT, a less respectable dot.com will set up selling exactly the same products without VAT and that is where the customers will go. The proposal is arguably inconsistent with the Ottawa Accord because it provides for different rates for on-line and off-line equivalent products such as, for example, newspapers which would enjoy a reduced rate in their off-line physical form. It will be almost impossible for e-businesses to work out the VAT status of their customers and impossible to work out whether their customers are based in the EU, whether they are businesses or not. And as we move ever closer towards electronic money, even the comfort of a credit card billing address will no longer be available to e-businesses as they try to ascertain whether they should charge VAT to a particular customer or not.
The amount of revenue about which we are talking is very small at the moment. There is no need to rush into this legislation. We are talking about the future of Europe's economy, the future of its e-economy, let us take the time to get this proposal right. I would call upon the Commission to rethink the proposal and to think of an alternative way. The preferable option by far is to zero rate European e-businesses to put them on the same playing-field as American and other businesses around the world."@en1
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