European Tax Integration

European Tax Integration

This book focuses on the status quo of European tax integration, combining law, policy and politics. Good policy should identify and address problems when they arise, achieving suitable solutions that law implements. Within the European Union, this relation is malfunctioning or entirely missing in direct tax matters. Positive tax integration in the European Union has mostly failed to transform supranational policy goals into actual measures of harmonization and coordination, except for the recent reaction to tax avoidance. The topical studies contained in this book hold that without a proper action that removes cross-border tax obstacles, positive tax integration shifts away from its original goals. Furthermore, such a scenario leaves the bulk of European tax integration in the hands of the limits established by negative tax integration, with little room for developing a structured policy in the interest of the European Union. This peer-reviewed publication aims to stimulate debate among scholars, decision-makers, practitioners, politicians and interpreters of European international tax law, with a view to bringing European tax integration back on the right track.

Tax Coordination in the European Community

The results of the work of the Conference on Tax Coordination in the European Community appear at a time when the Community has undertaken, as a priority task, the completion of the internal market. The Commission's programme and proposed timetable for the achievement of that goal are spelt out in the White Paper, which was endorsed by the European Council at Milan in June 1985, an endorsement which was repeated at the Council's subsequent meeting in Luxemburg in December 1985. The Commission wholly endorses the views of the Conference as regards the need for urgent action to remove the grave restrictions on the free movement of the factors of production which continue to exist within the Community. It is the Commission's firm view that only a true dismantling of fiscal frontiers can permit the creation of an area without internal frontiers for which the Single European Act provides. To that end a certain approximation of rates of indirect taxation is indispensable if unacceptable distortion of competition is to be avoided. It is noteworthy that the Conference attaches great importance to the Community's problems in the field of direct taxation. This work will be particularly useful to the Commission, which intends to produce a further White Paper on company taxation in the near future. As the Conference rightly notes, action in this field is important for equalisation of the conditions of competition necessary for the completion of the internal market.

EUROPEAN TAX INTEGRATION