Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-13-Speech-4-018-000"
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"en.20111013.3.4-018-000"2
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"Madam President, VAT is sometimes called a luxury tax, yet it is a luxury for those who can afford it. Those who are the highest earners in society know how to avoid paying VAT, while the poorest in society seem to have to bear the brunt, whether on domestic fuel or general household goods. It has a cost to the UK taxpayer of almost GBP 15 billion a year which is transferred from the UK to the European Union in VAT payments, and governments of all persuasions in the UK forget to actually advertise that VAT is an EU tax, or an EU-inspired tax. We can no longer support this and this is not a tax that should be on an EU scale. It should be for a national government to decide what sales tax it should have and all revenue should stay within the Member State.
The example that I have already alluded to is the VAT on domestic fuel. Now this was a political hot potato in the UK in the early 1990s. The then Conservative Government lost a lot of political credibility when it tried to increase VAT to 15%. It never explained once that it had to do it because of EU membership. The then Labour opposition criticised this tax as being an affront to poor people; yet when Labour came to power in 1997 did they abolish it? No. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, had to come here cap in hand to ask permission to reduce it to 5%. So what happened to it being a tax on ordinary people? This VAT is a scam on the ordinary working class people of my country and should be abolished at an EU level."@en1
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