Activities of Bernd LUCKE related to 2015/2058(INI)
Shadow reports (1)
REPORT on tax avoidance and tax evasion as challenges for governance, social protection and development in developing countries PDF (194 KB) DOC (126 KB)
Amendments (38)
Amendment 6 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Expresses concerns about the level of corruption and untransparent public administration in many developing countries which hinders tax revenues from being invested in state-building, public services or public infrastructure;
Amendment 8 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 b (new)
Paragraph 1 b (new)
1b. Stresses that when negotiating tax treaties with developing countries, taxes should be levied in the country in which value added is created and the aggregate tax burden should be roughly proportional to all kinds of public services provided by the government and used by the citizens;
Amendment 19 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls for the immediate introduction of a consolidated common tax base for corpn Automatic Exchange of Information tax in order to standardise tax returnsmechanism;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas taxation can be a reliable and sustainable source of development finance if there is a progressivn incentive compatible taxation regime, an effective and efficient tax administration to promote tax compliance, and transparent and accountable use of public revenue;
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital D
Recital D
D. whereas fair tax regimes may provide vital finance to governments to cover citizens’' rights to basic services, such as healthcare and education for all, and whereas effective redistributive fiscal policies are essential incontribute to decreasing the effect of growing inequalities;
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
Amendment 38 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls on the Commission to set up an programme to assist developing countries in combating tax fraud which should include in particular human resources training and the development of administrative structures, corruption and inefficiencies in public administration;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F a (new)
Recital F a (new)
Fa. whereas developing countries still rely heavily on taxes from trade, which exposes national budgets to volatile commodity price, and are having difficulties in shifting to other types of domestic resources;
Amendment 43 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F b (new)
Recital F b (new)
Fb. whereas corporate tax revenues constitute a significant share of developing countries' national income, and in the past years developing countries have continually lowered corporate tax rates;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas, comparatively speaking, developing countries raise substantially less revenue than advanced economies (with a tax-to-GDP ratio ranging between 10 to 20%, as opposed to 30 to 40% of OECD economies) and are characterised by extremely narrow tax bases,; and whereas there is - especially in the least industrialised countries (LICs) - considerable potential for increasbroadening the tax-to-GDP ratio, especially in the least industrialised countries (LICs) base, thus allowing for lower tax rates without lowering the tax-to-GDP ratio;
Amendment 50 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas developing countries have been offering various tax incentives and exemptions, leadinglower level of public services and public infrastructure on the one hand and various non-transparent tax incentives and exemptions not based on a proper cost- benefit analysis on the other, they often tend to compete against each other when offering the most favourable tax treatments. This may lead to harmful tax competition and a ‘'race to the bottom’' that brings greater benefit to multinational corporations (MNCs) than to developing countries;
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Notes that the most effective way to help developing countries is helping them to develop fair and efficient tax systems and to provide technical support to their tax administrations to help them to maintain sustainable domestic taxation systems;
Amendment 54 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H a (new)
Recital H a (new)
Ha. whereas some developing countries pursue aggressive tax policies which encourage tax avoidance and tax evasion; whereas such practices are detrimental to the citizens both of developed countries and other developing countries;
Amendment 54 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Encourages developing countries to implement tax reforms which combine a broadening of the tax base with lower individual tax rates;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 c (new)
Paragraph 6 c (new)
6c. Calls on developing countries to set an end to all types of tax policies which encourage tax avoidance and tax evasion detrimental to other countries and to their own citizens; urges developing countries to fully cooperate with developed countries in the elimination of such practices;
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H b (new)
Recital H b (new)
Hb. whereas tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions that allow banking or financial information to be kept private, combined with 'zero-tax' regimes to attract capital and revenues that should have been taxed in other countries, generate harmful tax competition with a loss of an estimated $189 billion of tax revenue annually;
Amendment 60 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls on the OSCEECD and the G20 to abide by their pledges and adopt the latest BEPS measures in 2015;
Amendment 65 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I
Recital I
I. whereas many developing countries cannot attain even the minimum tax level necessary to finance their basic functioning, their public services and their efforts to reduce poverty; whereas tax avoidance and tax evasion are certainly not the only causes for government dysfunction and insufficient poverty reduction;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital I a (new)
Recital I a (new)
Ia. whereas a recent impact assessment carried out by the Netherlands government concluded that the Dutch tax system facilitated avoidance of withholding tax, leading to foregone dividends and interest from withholding tax revenues in developing countries in the range of 150-550 million euros per year;
Amendment 67 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
Amendment 74 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital K
Recital K
K. whereas it is not at all obvious that revenue raising can have an important role to play in rebalancing gender inequalities;
Amendment 77 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Supports increased participation of developing countries in the structures and procedures of international tax cooperation; encourages developing countries to participate in the OECD multilateral convention negotiations and aims at improving the OECD Model Tax Convention. Calls for a code of conduct to be established for governments of the countries concerned in order to ensure tax systems are managed efficiently;
Amendment 81 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Calls on the Commission to put forward an action plan, in the form of a communication, on supporting developing countries in fighting tax dodgingcorruption and tax dodging, reducing barriers to international trade and setting up fairer tax systems, taking into account the work undertaken by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD in advance of the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to be held from 13 to 16 July 2015, and the impact of international tax treaties on developing countries;
Amendment 83 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Expresses concerns about the level of corruption and non-transparent public administration in many developing countries which hinder tax revenues from being invested in state-building, public services or public infrastructure;
Amendment 83 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
Amendment 88 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Stresses that tax avoidance and tax evasion represent a considerable financial loss for developing countries, and that taking appropriate measures at national, European and international level against these practices should be a top priority for the EU;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4a. Encourages developing countries to implement tax reforms which combine a broadening of the tax base with lower individual tax rates;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Asks the Commission to give good governance in tax matters and fair tax collection a high place on the agenda in its policy dialogue (political, development and trade) and in all development cooperation agreements with partner countries, enhancing ownership and domestic accountability by fostering an environment where national parliaments are able to meaningfully contribute to the formulation and oversight of national budgets, including on domestic revenues and tax matters, and supporting the role of civil society in ensuring public scrutiny of tax governance and monitoring of cases of tax fraud, inter alia by setting up effective systems for protecting whistleblowers and journalistic sources;
Amendment 109 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Urges that information on beneficial ownership of companies, trusts and other institutions should be made publicly available in open-data formats, in order to prevent anonymous shell companies and similar legal structures from being used to finance illegal activities;
Amendment 114 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls on the EU and the Member States to enforce the principle that multinational companies, and especially those companies extracting natural resources, must adopt country-by-country reporting (CBCR) as standard, requiring them to publish as part of their annual report on a country-by-country basis for each territory in which they operate including the names of all subsidiaries, their financial performance, relevant tax information, assets and number of employees, and to ensure that this information is publicly available;
Amendment 119 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Calls for the establishment of a globally accepted definition of tax havens, of penalties for operators making use of them and of a blacklist of countries that do not combat tax evasion or accept it, as has been called for previously;
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 b (new)
Paragraph 7 b (new)
7b. Calls on developing countries to set an end to all types of tax policies which encourage tax avoidance and tax evasion detrimental to other countries and to their own citizens; urges developing countries to fully cooperate with developed countries in the elimination of such practices;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 c (new)
Paragraph 7 c (new)
7c. Urges developing countries to decisively tackle the problem of domestic tax evasion and tax avoidance and reduce the size of the informal sector; urges them for this purpose to design an incentive compatible tax system with tax rates which are considered fair and affordable and the tax base in a simple, comprehensive way;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. UrgNotes the Commission and all the Member States, following the example of some Member States, to conduct impact assessments of European tax policies on developing countries, in order to strengthen policy coherence for development and remove pat the most effective way to help developing countries is to helping them to develop fair and efficient tax systems and to provide technical support to their tax administracticeons that have negative spillovers on developing countrieo help them maintain sustainable domestic taxation systems;
Amendment 138 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Stresses thant when negotiating tax treaties with developing countries, source- country taxation rights should be preservtaxes should be levied in the country in which value added is created, and the UN Model Tax Convention should be preferred to the OECD Model Tax Convention in order to avoid a bias towards developed countries’ interests and ensure a fair distribution of taxing rightaggregate tax burden should be roughly proportional to all kinds of public services provided by the government and used by the citizens;
Amendment 140 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Urges the EU and the Member States to ensure that the UN taxation committee is transformed into a genuine intergovernmental body equipped with additional resources, ensuring thatStrongly supports increased participation by developing countries in the structures and procedures of international tax cooperation; encourages developing countries canto participate equally in the global reform of existing international tax rulesin the OECD multilateral convention negotiations and aims at improving the OECD Model Tax Convention;
Amendment 147 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Stresses that gender analysis should be made central to tax justicetax evasion undermines government support to poor and lower- income households, in many of which women are disproportionately represented;
Amendment 156 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Calls on the EIB to ensure that companies that receive EIB support do not participate in tax evasion via offshore centres and tax havens, and to increase its transparency policy by, for example, making all of its reports and investigations publicly available;