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Every year around 1 trillion € is lost to tax evasion & avoidance. Unfair to citizens, companies & serious problem for member states
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EU "president" Herman Van Rompuy is desperately trying to find a pseudo activity that he thinks will be popular among European citizens, who are increasingly skeptic about the costly - and failed - euro rescue policies. The haiku poet seems to think that tax evasion is the golden opportunity to make the EUSSR popular again:
The fight against tax evasion will be on the agenda of the next European Union summit in May, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said Friday.
"Every year a trillion euros are lost in tax evasion and tax avoidance" in Europe, Van Rompuy said in a video message. "I have decided to put tax evasion on the agenda of the next May 22" summit.
Van Rompuy, who chairs the talks between the bloc's 27 leaders, said the amount lost each year equalled the GDP of Spain, the EU's fifth biggest economy, and was 100 times the size of the 10-billion-euro bailout just agreed for Cyprus.
"Tax evasion is unfair to citizens" as well as to companies, Van Rompuy said. "We simply cannot afford or tolerate tax complacency."
A renewed drive to stamp out tax fraud has launched in Europe amid a scandal embroiling French President Francois Hollande's government and is likely to figure prominently at talks in Dublin on Friday and Saturday between the EU's finance ministers.
However, Van Rompuy is seriously underestimating the intelligence of European citizens, who,according to an old Scandinavian saying, are not prepared to accept a goat guarding a cabbage patch:
The European Union is still wasting billions every year, spending watchdogs said today as they refused to sign off official accounts - again.
It is the 18th successive year that the Court of Auditors has said the EU’s finances were in such a mess that they could not be given a clean bill of health. In fact errors are still on the rise.
It included a ‘special premium’ paid to a farmer for 150 sheep which did not exist and 200,000 euros paid for a two-storey "laboratory" for producing fruit in Lombardy, Italy which inspectors found had ‘predominantly the charters of a private residence’.
The revelations will heap pressure on David Cameron who suffered a humiliating Commons defeat last week as Labour and Tory rebels united to demand he insist on a cut on the vast budget at talks next month.
The 27 member states and the executive Commission stand accused of failing to do enough to track billions of pounds in spending at a time when countries are imposing deep spending cuts at homes.
The Court of Auditors said that errors in EU payments had risen to 3.9 per cent from the 2011 budget of almost 130billion euros (£104billion).
It added that there were ‘too many cases of EU money not hitting the target or being used sub-optimally’.
Read the entire article here
And it is so easy for an overpaid bureaucrat, like Van Rompuy - who barely pays any taxes himself - to talk about other peoples' tax evasion:
A ruling by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice upheld the long-held exemption that spares former EU officials from paying national taxes on their EU earnings.
Instead, they pay a special low-rate EU community tax that starts at just eight per cent.
It means former EU commissioners, including Lord Kinnock and Lord Mandelson, can receive their five-figure taxpayer-funded pensions at far lower tax rates than are paid by other British citizens.
The decision is bound to infuriate millions of pensioners.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, said: “Tax, for Eurocrats, is something that happens to other people.”
Robert Oxley, Campaign Manager of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Taxpayers are fed up of funding the lavish lifestyle of EU staff while having to tighten their own belts at home. This ruling is further evidence that the EU elite is out of touch with reality.” --
Recent research showed that European taxpayers are now spending £1billion a year on pensions for retired officials. British taxpayers contributed around £135million in 2010.
The Luxembourg court ruling upholds a “privileges and immunities” protocol that dates back more than 50 years.
Read the entire article here
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