Brussels, 22/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - The recommendations of the committee TAXE2 of the European Parliament received broad support for any coming legislative initiatives in the fight against aggressive tax planning. The report by Michael Theurer (ALDE, Germany) and Jeppe Kofod (S&D, Denmark) was approved by 25 votes in favour, 6 against and 9 abstentions. The report will be voted on at the July plenary and the mandate of the special committee TAXE2 on tax rulings and other similar measures will reach its end. However, the MEPs are not losing sight of the issue of tax evasion and will return to this in the framework of their work within the Panama Papers committee of investigation.
“We're setting clear demands for increased accountability, effective deterrence in the form of markedly increased sanctions for tax havens, banks, tax advisers and companies”, Kofod said after the vote in the parliamentary committee. The text provides, amongst other things, for the option to review, or even suspend, trade agreements and to ban access to EU funds for tax havens, or to withdraw licences from those who are carrying out tax planning illegally.
The authors of the report want to see the current 'patent box' regimes, tax regimes favourable to intellectual property, gradually cancelled and banned altogether by 2021. They call upon the European Commission to adopt clear legislation on the definitions of 'economic substance', 'value creation' and 'permanent establishment' “to resolve the problem of letterbox companies in particular”. The MEPs are also calling for the creation of an EU public register of legal owners and beneficial owners of companies or trusts.
They also wish to bring in a withholding tax for the EU, in order to ensure that profits generated in the EU are taxed once before they leave it.
In the report, the members of the TAXE2 committee also regret the Council's position, which waters down the provisions of the anti-tax avoidance directive (see EUROPE 11577).
In a press release, the EPP group said that the TAXE2 committee had made no revolutionary discoveries and called upon the member states to work together better, in order to avoid further scandals such as Panama Papers. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)