Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-02-08-Speech-1-096"
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"en.20100208.14.1-096"2
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"Ladies and gentlemen, a 4% GDP decline, 21 million unemployed EU citizens, deficit proceedings against 20 Member States, 80% State indebtedness. With the European Union in such a state, I ask: can we afford the luxury of allowing billions in taxes to just drain away? It is intolerable that while we sacrifice huge amounts on economic stimulus and on keeping workplaces open, there has been no progress at EU level for finding ways, for instance, to move the recovery of cross-border tax liabilities up from the shameful 5% level. Or whether we should extend the automatic exchange of information uniformly to all income, thereby eliminating the need for governments to get information from stolen data storage media about their citizens’ untaxed income invested here and there.
At the moment, the rate of tax fraud in the EU amounts to two and a half times the total EU budget. I strongly believe that Member States’ tax authorities must cooperate in order to track down tax fraud. Nobody should be able to hide behind bank secrecy, and let us abolish quasi-tax havens inside the European Union, even when, my fellow Members, it hurts the Member States concerned. The interest of Europe as a whole must take precedence over partial viewpoints. Honest taxpaying citizens of the EU expect no less from us than rules that are binding for everybody, without back doors.
The Domenici report gives an account of how to close those back doors. Our topic now is not tax harmonisation but how to recover taxes levied according to each Member State’s rules, with the help of others, if need be. All other elements of the tax package before us serve this same purpose. On behalf of the EPP, I have added several suggestions to the Domenici report which had the support of other political groups as well. In the first place, I suggested setting up a system of incentives that would guarantee that the Member State acting on behalf of the one seeking recovery of cross-border taxes would receive a portion of the recovered sums. This way, we could give a push to the halting cooperation between tax departments. Secondly, by using a system of comparative profits, we could take effective action, especially against multinational companies that manipulate transfer prices in order to evade taxes. I know that Commissioner Kovács has doubts about this, but I think work could begin in that direction.
Finally, I am glad the Commission supports the need for tightening the requirements for tax information exchange as stipulated by the OECD model agreement applicable to 12 States. I think that by continuing on these paths, we can move towards a more honest tax policy."@en1
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