Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-07-Speech-2-346"
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"en.20050607.30.2-346"2
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"Mr President, in his English Dictionary of 1755 Samuel Johnson defined excise as ‘a hateful tax’, and this tax and the way it is policed have become a hate object also for my Scottish constituents. They call me in tears to describe having their cars dismantled and their children terrified by customs officers. Okay, they are told, you can appeal to the courts – except that they cannot afford the courts against the customs’ bottomless pockets, and the burden of proof falls on them.
And what good do these exaggerated excise taxes do? They victimise honest retailers who cannot compete with personal purchases abroad, and the much more serious smuggling by organised crime which these taxes promote. They actually reduce overall tax revenue. And then there is the cost of all those extra customs inspectors.
And health. Do excise taxes really discourage smoking and drinking? No! Because the high level of personally imported and smuggled cigarettes and alcohol means that the actual cost of smoking and drinking is cheaper. Excise is not only hateful, it is also pointless, and high rates of excise tax which are out of line with those in other countries are even more pointless. All they do is distort shopping patterns absurdly and provide fertile ground for organised crime to flourish.
You, Mr Commissioner, are responsible for ensuring that the single European market functions properly, with free movement of goods and people; and clearly it does not function where there are large disparities in rates of excise duty. I, we, accept the concept of tax competition. Competition exists in income and corporate taxes, and rightly so. Why not also with excise? Perhaps it is time to abandon excise tax altogether and turn to value added tax as the only consumption tax."@en1
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