MEPs say EU governments should do more to improve corporate tax transparency in Europe. They want member states to sign up to a mandatory EU-wide
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MEPs say EU governments should do more to improve corporate tax transparency in Europe.
They want member states to sign up to a mandatory EU-wide system in which tax authorities would automatically exchange information.
But parliamentarians say it should start right away, rather than on the first of January.
One German MEP said talks with EU governments lacked transparency themselves.
“Basically we got nothing at all from the Council. Secondly we now have some documents which are important, but we could read them only in a reading room. But everything which came from Belgium, the Netherlands, from Luxembourg, from the UK has been blacked out. Thus these documents are of limited value,” said Sven Giegold of the Greens.
An Italian MEP, unsurprisngly, wanted the European Parliament to have more power in the area of taxation.
“What do we want? It would be interesting to transform the special committee on tax rulings into an inquiry committee in order to be more powerful and to check more documents,” said Marco Zanni.
EU governments agreed to an automatic exchange of tax information earlier this month, but rejected the commission’s proposal that it should be retrospective.