For a European Fiscal Snake (“EFS”)

Archives de la consultation :

Chargement...
Evaluation: 4.5000
5
4
3
2
1

Evaluation: 4,5/5 avec 2 votes

Publié samedi 28 juin 2008 à 22h28
par Sortir de l'Impasse

(vu 602 fois et 0 commentaires)

From a French perspective, we always believe that Ireland has one of the lowest taxation systems in Europe, and that one the reasons for the Irish “no” was the protection of these low taxes.

A couple of days ago (on 26th June), Eurostat published very interesting and useful analysis to draw some comparisons between the different taxations in Europe. Thanks to this survey, we discovered that Ireland had now the highest implicit tax rate on capital amongst the 27 European countries: 42.5% in 2006, compared to 27.1% in 1996. In France for instance, this implicit tax rate on capital is “only” 41.5%... This proved once again that we, French people, should sometimes be more open minded and work at revamping our “idées préconçues”.

The survey also shows large spreads between taxation rates in Europe: on capital, the range of implicit taxation is between 8.4% in Estonia, and 42.5% in Ireland. On labour, it is between 21.5% in Malta and 44.2% in Sweden.

We strongly believe that to be efficient in the world, Europe should be able to speak one voice, whether it is for diplomacy or for environmental challenges. Let us take an example: the euro for 15 of us. Having , a common currency and so a common monetary policy has helped us to be less affected - so far - by the financial crisis, compared to what we would have been if we still had 15 different monetary policies.

United we are strong, divided we give opportunities to others to make arbitrages against our own interests. Clearly, these arbitrages induce at the end social dumping, that makes us collectively weaken in a world that is more and more competitive. On the taxation side, we know that having unique tax rates in Europe is not immediately feasible, even if it was a common target which is actually not the case today. This is why we propose an intermediary step, through the European Fiscal Snake (“EFS”) that would work a little bit like the European Monetary Snake used to work. This EFS will consist in defining and setting up a maximum spread in Europe for taxes on capital, labour and consumption.

PES Manifesto

For a European Fiscal Snake (“EFS”)

Commentaires