UBM fleeing UK for corporate tax reasons - make the case for EU tax harmonisation

April 29th, 2008by David Schoibl

United Business Media UBM have announced that they will relocate their holding company for tax reasons to Ireland and they might not be the last to flee a “high tax UK”, as they might put it. There is a race to the bottom on corporation tax going on across Europe. The competition of regulatory and tax regimes across Europe leaves national governments no choice but to follow suit. A very low corporation tax in Slovakia led Austria to lower its corporation tax and now German Laender bordering Austria are lobbying their national government to lower corporation tax in turn. Unless we start discussing (corporate) tax harmonisation on the EU level this race to the bottom will continue and the tax burden on low income households will increase and further pressure will be put on national and regional governments to cut public spending. Member states goverments will only be able to regain sovereignty on (corporation) tax and wider macro-economic issues when they start collaborating on tax on the European level.

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