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News Archive 2007

9/07/2007

No legal basis for Commission's call for single VAT rate

Britain can and should veto any European Commission plans to reduce the number of goods excluded from VAT, Welsh Conservative MEP Jonathan Evans MEP said today.

Mr Evans, who is the Conservative spokesman on economic and monetary affairs, is calling for the move following reports this week that the EU tax commissioner is drawing up plans for a simplification of rates across Europe.

Calls for a harmonisation of VAT rates across the European Union have had no legal basis in the past, he added.

Mr Evans said: "From time to time some zealots in the European Commission and elsewhere propose this tax harmonisation. But up until now there has been no legal basis for it at all.

"Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have said that our ability to set our own tax rates is unchanged by the new treaty they agreed just a fortnight ago. If that's true there would be no basis for the Commission or anybody else to alter Britain's rates.

"In the last few weeks, the Commission has proposed that the base for taxation rather than the actual rates of tax set should be harmonised. They have claimed that this would in no way affect the right of Member States to set their own tax levels. These now seem pretty empty words."

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