On the evening of October 26, 2015 the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect (TAXE) voted on the report that was drafted by Ms Elisa Ferreira and Mr Michael Theurer. And 1047 proposed amendments thereto. The report was adopted with 34 votes in favor, 3 against and 7 abstentions.

Let’s start by stating that we lost track of the outcome of the votings per each proposed amendment.

The report recommends introducing country-by-country reporting for multinational companies on financial data including profits made, taxes paid and subsidies received. It also advocates introducing clear definitions of “economic substance” and other determining factors of corporate tax bills.

Common agreement is also needed on what is allowed in terms of tax rulings and advanced ‘transfer pricing agreements’ (how transactions are valued within the same company).

Not surprisingly TAXE pleas for a compulsory EU wide common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB), which should be introduced as soon as possible. Reason here for is that the Committee Members seem to feel that this is the best way to put an end to preferential regimes, mismatches between national tax systems and also most of the issues leading to tax base erosion at European level.

Furthermore TAXE urges EU member states to systematically share their national rulings and other tax information that has an impact on other member states. TAXE insists that the European Commission should also receive this information, to enable it to play its proper role as competition watchdog to the full.

TAXE also call for better protection for whistleblowers whose revelations promote the public interest.

As soon as the final report including the adopted amendments thereto is published by the European Parliament, we will update this article by including a link to the report in this article.

Next steps

On November 16, 2015 TAXE intends to meet with multinational corporations. According to TAXE Facebook and Google have already agreed to participate in the meeting.

Subsequently a plenary EP sitting is scheduled for the second half of November 2015.

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