{"id":17351,"date":"2012-09-18T09:10:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T08:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=17351"},"modified":"2012-09-18T09:11:37","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T08:11:37","slug":"17351","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/09\/18\/17351\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe could begin to close the tax gap if only Austria and Luxembourg stopped supporting tax crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EU is\u00a0increasingly\u00a0realising the importance of closing the tax gaop across Europe to ensure\u00a0public\u00a0services can be\u00a0maintained. As EuroPolitics has reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tackling tax fraud and harmful competition is increasingly important to help resolve the economic crisis that continues to plague the Union, according to Taxation Commissioner Algirdas Semeta. He reiterated, on 17 September, that the Commission would strive to \u201censure progress\u201d on the issue of savings taxation. By year\u2019s end it will present proposals \u201cfor concrete actions\u201d to bring tax havens into line.<\/p>\n

Semeta welcomed the comments made by Commission President Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Manuel Barroso in his \u2018State of the Union\u2019 address to the European Parliament, on 12 September.<\/p>\n

\u201cStopping tax fraud and tax evasion could put extra billions into the public purse across Europe,\u201d said Barroso. \u201cThis is why the Commission will fight for an agreement on the revised Savings Tax Directive, and on mandates to negotiate stronger savings tax agreements with third countries,\u201d namely Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino and Monaco.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we succeeded in working out a good agreement with the Swiss, member states could collect taxes much more effectively and solve certain budget consolidation problems,\u201d observed Semeta.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Absolutely right.<\/p>\n

The obstacles are the\u00a0governments\u00a0of Luxembourg and Austria, both of whom are going\u00a0out\u00a0of their way to support and promote tax crime: I can be as unsubtle as that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The EU is\u00a0increasingly\u00a0realising the importance of closing the tax gaop across Europe to ensure\u00a0public\u00a0services can be\u00a0maintained. As EuroPolitics has reported: Tackling tax fraud and harmful
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}