Inside The Eu Code Of Conduct Group 20 Years Of Tackling Harmful Tax Competition

This book discusses and evaluates the functioning, work and effectiveness of the diplomatic EU Code of Conduct Group in tackling harmful tax competition within the European Union and beyond. This Group, which celebrated its 20th anniversary on 9 March 2018, brings together representatives of the EU Member States, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union. As Member States still adhere to the Code Group's diplomatic character, implying confidentiality and closed meetings, its work is hidden by a veil of confidentiality. However, with the help of the EU Transparency Regulation and much persistence, more than 2,500 unpublished documents on the work of the Group were obtained by the author from the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. They provide a rare glimpse into the governance and work of the Group and, with that, to its effectiveness and the positions of individual Member States on many different tax regimes and tax avoidance practices. In this book, the content of these documents is made available to the reader. In addition to tax law, the book considers other relevant disciplines - such as EU law, economics and political science - to ensure a comprehensive approach. The book investigates the historical background and purpose of the political EU Code of Conduct on Business Taxation, its legal status, the governance and working methods of the Group and the geographical and substantive scope of the Code. It assesses the substance and effectiveness of the Group's decisions in respect of national preferential tax regimes (pseudo-case law) and in respect of coordinated tax policies on general competition-sensitive tax issues (pseudo-legislation). It also discusses the interaction between the Code (soft law) and hard law, notably the State aid and market distortion rules. It concludes with an outlook on the Group's future.

This comprehensive book adopts a nuanced yet straightforward approach to analysing the complex phenomenon of international tax competition. Using the ongoing international efforts of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) as a basis for its analysis, it explores the mixed effects of tax competition and offers an effective approach that takes account of the asymmetrical global context.

This book investigates how the harmful tax competition is taken on in the European Union and especially what the relation is between the political achievements like the Code of Conduct and the counter measures of the individual Member States on the one hand and EU law on the other. It deals with the following questions: What is harmful tax competitition within the EU? What is the position of harmful tax competition in EU law? What are the possible measures to combat harmful tax competition and what is the relation to EU law?

The intersection between fiscal state aid and taxation has become more topical than ever. Mounting financial crises have left EU Member States scrambling to increase their tax revenue, balance their budgets, and attract capital. Taking advantage of these trends, multinational enterprises have lobbied for favourable tax arrangements, raising questions about the breadth of control the Commission can and should practise. To address egregious instances of favourable taxation, the Commission has tried to simultaneously use soft law and deploy Treaty rules on state aid. Fiscal State Aid Law and Harmful Tax Competition in the EU examines the use of state aid rules against national tax measures. Kyriazis's book presents a targeted investigation of these measures in two parts. The first part addresses Commission decisions and ECJ judgments of the early 2000s, which the author calls the "first wave". The second part consists of all the recent Commission decisions and investigations into tax schemes and individual tax rulings, most notably the Apple, Fiat, Starbucks, and Amazon investigations, which Kyriazis labels the "second wave". The characteristics and common threads of each wave are set out, their similarities and differences dissected, and their nexus to the EU's fight against harmful tax competition explored. Containing a thorough analysis of the legal concept of fiscal state aid under Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, this book will be of interest to scholars of European and International Tax law and practitioners working in the field of European competition law.

Sovereign states commonly use tax incentives in order to attract investment and capital from abroad. Although it has been recognized for many years that the forms and features of these incentives can often have harmful effects, there has not until now been a clear, in depth, full scale study of what these effects are, how they come about, and how they can be minimised or avoided. This new book by Carlo Pinto performs the indispensable function of crystallising the extensive European and American literature in the field, locating his legal analysis in an EU law context that offers a framework within which tax lawyers in both government and business can find common ground. Tax Competition and EU Law builds an authoritative synthesis and proposal on its detailed discussions of all aspects of the theory and practice of tax competition, including the following: evidence of interjurisdictional tax competition in the U.S. experience and what the EU can learn from it; methodologies to study tax competition; economic evidence of tax competition in Europe; Member States' 'benchmark' tax systems; internal market distortion provisions of the EC Treaty (Articles 96 and 97); relevant EMU provisions; applicability of state aid provisions (EC Treaty Article 87) to direct tax measures; the EU 'Code of Conduct' Group; OECD countermeasures against harmful tax competition; and, CFC legislation. In the course of his presentation the author analyses various tax regimes and court cases from most EU Member States, outlining the issues and clarifications each brings to the central questions. His final proposal clearly demonstrates that the beneficial effects of tax competition ' decrease in direct tax burden, improved efficiency in public administration, enhancement of employment and development ' need not be fraught with the risk of fiscal degradation. This is a major milestone in the success of the projected harmonisation of taxation in the European Union.

This book analyses the functioning and effectiveness of the diplomatic EU Code of Conduct Group in tackling harmful tax competition in the European Union.