ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: L’évasion fiscale coûte à la France entre 40 et 60 milliards d’euros par an
by L’HUMANITÉ.FR WITH AFP
Translated Monday 12 October 2015, by
Countries engaging in tax competition to attract multinationals cost France between 40 and 60 billion euros per year, according to a parliamentary report calling for a fight against this spirit of ’predation’.
"The fight against ’aggressive’ tax evasion - the misuse of legal mechanisms to evade taxes - is today a European and global obligation", say MEPs Marc Laffineur (Republicans) and Isabelle Bruneau (PS), authors of the parliamentary report on tax evasion.
According to the report, presented Tuesday night to MPs, the shortfall due to tax evasion "is about 2-3% of national GDP - for France 40 to 60 billion euros." Of this amount, 15 billion is lost due to corporate tax rates.
"In the context of a fiscal crisis and in order to avoid governments transferring part of the tax burden to households, taxpayers cannot reasonably accept that their tax resources are being ’siphoned off’ due to the legislation in some countries," they add. To fight against this phenomenon, the report calls for further European tax harmonization, to settle on a "definition of the common tax base in all Member States."
MEPs further advocate taxing the companies where they carry out their activity and not where their headquarters are located. "This has been done for VAT on e-commerce since 1 January 2015. It should be rapidly extended to corporation tax," they write. This proposal is also supported by the OECD, which on Monday announced a plan against tax optimization by multinationals. This overhaul of international tax standards must be approved by G20 finance ministers this week and heads of state in November.
On Tuesday, EU finance ministers also adopted an agreement for the automatic exchange of information on tax agreements between states and multinationals.