What is now known as the European Union started as a free-trade area, which is something to be admired. But over the decades, the free trade area has mutated into a statist super-bureaucracy pushing for centralization and harmonization. Now, according to leaked documents, the collectivists in Brussels want to impose a direct tax. This would be on top of the already onerous tax systems imposed by member nations. Needless to say, one hopes that one of the 27 nations will use its veto to stop this terrible idea. That would seem to be a simple and obvious task, but the vast majority of politicians in all European nations are terrified of being called anti-European, so even awful ideas become very plausible threats. The UK-based Daily Express reports:
Secret plans to seize more than £4billion a year from Britain and make its citizens pay taxes direct to Europe emerged last night. The leaked proposals, seen by the Daily Express, …would…mean Brussels being given the power to dip straight into taxpayers’ pockets. Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois vowed they would be resisted by a Tory government. He said: “The idea of an EU tax is a non-starter. …Possible taxes suggested in the report – which could be discussed as soon as the start of the European summit in Brussels tomorrow – include levies on phone calls, flights, financial transactions or carbon emissions. …Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, branded the idea of direct taxation from Brussels an “outrage”. He added: “Control of taxation must rest solely in the hands of democratically elected politicians who answer to British taxpayers. “The EU has shown time and time again it is greedy for power. This is another sign they will never stop trying to grab it.”
[…] the French and Germans, is to give Brussels direct fiscal powers. This almost certainly would mean E.U.-wide taxes imposed by Brussels, presumably accompanied by expanded levels of intra-E.U. […]
[…] ability, but I’ll bet dollars-to-donuts that “true economic governance” will lead to more spending and higher taxes. Why? Because “economic governance” is just a sanitized way of describing a cartel of […]
A while ago you posted a blog entry on high income taxes in England, and how that was pushing players to go to Spain where there is a relatively low income tax on wealthy foreigners. Well, the Spanish PSOE government has expressed their intentions of raising that income tax from 24% to 43%, which would effectively be higher than most other countries in Western Europe.
http://www.economicthought.net/2009/11/spain-to-raise-taxes-on-foreign-entrepreneurs/
Great blog, Dan! The EU-wide taxation idea is at least as old as the Maastricht Treaty, and it pops up from time to time and you’d think they would scrap the idea forever. However, the statists know that they only have to be successful once to achieve their goal – we the friends of freedom on the other hand have to be successful every time to achieve our goal. The odds are stacked against freedom in this case, which is not to say the fight is over.