Global minimum tax rate on the agenda of meeting with Slovenian MPs

Three similar meetings, organised with the intention of building common ground and learning from each other’s perspective, have already been organised with parliamentarians from Portugal, Germany and France.

Opening Wednesday’s meeting, Paul Tang, the Chair of the EP’s tax subcommittee (FISC) said that tax policy is mostly set in the capitals not Brussels and yet the efffect of these policies is EU-wide. This was the main reason for needing a national – European debate.

Robert Polnar, the Chair of of the Slovenian parliament’s finance committee, said that tax had risen further up the agenda after the Covid-19 pandemic, with the post-pandemic recovery needing to be financed urgently.

You can watch the meeting here.

OECD/G20 global minimum tax and EU digital levy on the agenda

The meeting was orchestrated around two main topics: the implementation of the recent OECD/G20 agreement on a global minimum effective tax rate, and the possible introduction of an EU digital levy.

MEPs and MPs mostly expressed satisfaction that an agreement had been reached among a large majority of the world’s countries which would establish a minimum effective corporate tax rate of 15%. Some said that this should not constitute the end goal but rather as the minimum floor on which to build common tax policy further. Concerns as to what exemptions would be carved out and how transfer pricing would negatively affect the agreement were also expressed.

Participants then also discussed ways to introduce an EU digital levy. It was expressed that such a digital levy may now be impractical in view of the agreement on a minimum effective tax rate and that therefore an alternative could be considered which would fulfil the same purpose of providing one of the new own resources for the EU budget. Such an alternative could be a tax levied for the use of the EU single market, Mr Tang suggested.

You can watch the meeting here.