25 Amendments of Manon AUBRY related to 2020/2258(INI)
Amendment 26 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
C a. whereas it results in financial losses to EU Member States, which is a problem especially for the recovery from the sanitary, social and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, for the financing of the green transition and which moves the tax burden to lower households;
Amendment 30 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C b (new)
Recital C b (new)
C b. whereas independent research 24 suggests EU member states collectively lose most corporate tax revenues to other EU member states than third countries; underlines that the main cause for this loss of revenues is the lack of legislative action against intra-EU aggressive tax practices and harmful tax competition;
Amendment 31 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C c (new)
Recital C c (new)
C c. whereas aggressive tax planning within the union is the most significant source of corporate tax base erosion and corporate tax avoidance impacting EU Member States 25
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Notes the variety of EU instruments adopted to address HTP inside the Union, which include ATAD I and II, the Interest and Royalties Directive, the Parent Subsidiary Directive, the Directive on Administrative Cooperation in the Field of Taxation, and, in particular, DAC 3, 4 and 6 (on tax rulings, country-by-country reporting and mandatory disclosure rules for intermediaries), the various Commission recommendations to the Council, the CoC, and the Council recommendations in the framework of the European Semester dealing with aggressive tax planning; however, notes that profit shifting and aggressive tax planning have continued to take place within the EU;
Amendment 77 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Welcomes the internal and external dimension of the work conducted by the CoC Group on HTP; notes that the external dimension of HTP is mainly dealt with by the CoC Group with the application of the ‘Fair Taxation’ criterion; deplores the lack of coherence between the weak criteria on HTP applied to Member States and the tougher criteria, in particular on economic substance, applied to third-country jurisdictions in the listing process;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Welcomes the fact that the proposal put forward by the US Administration for ‘The Made in America Tax Plan’ could facilitate a deal on Pillar II by mid-2021; but deplores the fact that the first announced rate of 21% for a minimum tax rate was recently changed to 15%, which could signal a less ambitious global compromise. Calls on the EU to advocate for a global minimum effective tax rate of at least 25%, in order for it to have a meaningful role in the fight against profit shifting;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6 a. Highlights that other solutions should be implemented to avoid tax dodging of multinational companies in all sectors; calls on States to introduce and collect the tax deficit of multinationals: the difference between what a corporation pays in taxes globally and what this corporation would have to pay if all its profits were subject to a minimum tax rate in each of the countries where it operates; Underlines that such solution could encourage other States to follow the move and progressively lead to a global solution;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls for the current scope of the CoC to be progressively updated in order to look into the general characteristics of a tax system to determine whether they have harmful effects. It calls for the inclusion of economic criteria in the assessment of harmful tax regimes, in particular to consider whether FDI and passive income are disproportionate compared to the country GDP. Highlights a general tendency of some sectors, such as real estate investments, to be more prone to potentially harmful tax exemptions;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Calls for the adoption of a definition of ‘minimum level of economic substance’, preferably based on a formulaic approach, and which would evolve progressively as reported income increases, which could be used to assess whether a tax regime is potentially harmful; highlights the economic substance requirement already included in the EU list’s ‘Fair Taxation’ criterion; calls further for this implementation to be monitored and evaluated. Calls on the Commission to follow-up the recently announced new legislative initiative to neutralise the misuse of shell entities for tax purpose. Recalls the importance of a full country-by-country reporting information in order to monitor the substance requirements;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Calls on the Commission to produce guidelines on how to design tax incentives with fewer risks of distorting the Single Marketsocially, economically and environmentally beneficial;
Amendment 134 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Notes that the Commission recognises that a future minimum global taxation standard would have to be integrated into the EU actions on fair tax competition, and that if no consensus is found at global level on such a standard, it should nonetheless be included in the CoC29 ; calls on the Commission to already assessfollow- up the recently announced the legislative proposals that will be necessary to implement Pillar II at Union level, including a revision of ATAD and of the Interest and Royalties Directive, and the reform of the CoC and of the criteria in the EU listing of non-cooperative jurisdictions; _________________ 29 COM(2020)0313.
Amendment 155 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. CStresses that the definition of harmful tax practices should be extended in order to include territorial tax regimes that facilitate double non-taxation, unilateral transfer pricing adjustments and similar rules that result in a deduction without a corresponding inclusion, along with all aggressive tax rules that facilitate tax avoidance and other no-tax or low-tax regimes that inherently attract profit shifting. In this last point, calls specifically calls on the Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of patent boxes and other intellectual property (IP) regimes under the new nexus approach defined by Action 5 of the BEPS Action Plan on HTP, and to consider banning them;
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12 a. Calls for the review of the Transparency Criteria, in particular to finalise the inclusion of point 1.4 global exchange of beneficial ownership; urges in particular a clear assessment of the United States regarding the transparency criteria;
Amendment 161 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 b (new)
Paragraph 12 b (new)
12 b. Highlights that some bilateral tax treaties established between EU countries and developing countries have harmful effects on the latter, including by raising the levels of poverty. Notes that this is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation predicted in the TFEU;
Amendment 167 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Welcomes the fact that the CoC has assessed 480 regimes since its creation, deeming around 13030 harmful31 ; recognises the positive effect of the Union’s work on HTP, which has led to a quasi-disappearance of preferential tax regimes within the Union; _________________ 30Exchange of views of the Subcommittee on Tax Matters (FISC) with Lyudmila Petkova, Chair of the Code of Conduct Group, held on 19 April 2021. 31 https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/docu ment/ST-9639-2018-REV-4/en/pdf
Amendment 171 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Highlights the non-binding nature of the CoC; deplores the fact that Member States could maintain a harmful regime without facing any repercussions, highlighting in this regard that EU blacklisted countries are responsible for less than 2 percent of global tax losses, in comparison, EU member states are responsible for 36 percent34;
Amendment 189 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Calls for a revision of the criteria, the governance and the scope of the CoC through a legally binding instrument that should replace the current intergovernmental arrangements and allow for a transition to qualified majority voting; requires that Parliament be fully included in the process of designing and adopting new policies and criteria to combat HTP;
Amendment 190 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15 a (new)
Paragraph 15 a (new)
15 a. Calls for the same criteria of the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions to be use to assess Member States and third countries and to give the same visibility on the assessment of both; highlights that research has suggested that five EU Member States – Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands – would be considered tax havens if subjected to the EU listing process. Calls further to consider designing mechanisms to better include the voices of non-EU countries in this process, for example by creating a working group or a consultative body that brings together non-EU countries, civil society and experts;
Amendment 192 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Considers the reform of the criteria of the CoC to be a matter of urgency and that it should assess all regimes proposing a tax rate below the future internationally agreed minimum effective tax rate in the framework of Pillar II of the Inclusive Framework as being potentially harmful, unless the revenues qualifying for a deduction or a reduced tax rate comply with robust and progressive economic substance requirements; in this sense, calls for the inclusion of 0 or low level taxations as standalone criteria; asks to include economic analysis to assess harmful tax regimes, and in particular whether FDI and passive income are disproportionate compared to the country GDP; underlines in this regard that the European Commission has collected those indicators for MSs and assessed that economic evidence suggests that 5 MSs’s tax rules are used by companies that engage in aggressive tax planning;
Amendment 201 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16 a. Calls on the CoC to equally assess all countries and jurisdictions in scope independently of their geopolitical and economic power; deplores the lack of consistency and unequal treatment of certain countries in the EU blacklisting procedure; observes the unequal playing field between countries adhering to the OECD Common Reporting Standard and US FATCA; calls on the CoC to stringently assess the United States;
Amendment 209 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Urges an enlargement of the scope of the CoC, notably by including preferential personal income or capital tax regimes, or personal income and wealth tax regimes that could lead to significant Single Market distortionsloss of public revenue;
Amendment 211 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17 a (new)
Paragraph 17 a (new)
Amendment 214 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Requires that the CoC Group appear at least once a year before Parliament; Calls on the CoC to invite Members of Parliament to become permanent observers in CoC discussions, with speaking possibilities at meetings and consultation status on documents and processes; underlines that Parliament should have the power of codecision on governance and criteria of the blacklisting process and that its role in relation to the Code of Conduct Group should be formalised; calls of the CoC Group to move to live stream meetings publicly; where parts of the meeting may require confidentiality, the members could request that specific parts of the meeting be closed, on a case by case basis and subject to majority decision-making by the members in each case;
Amendment 223 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Welcomes the publication of the biannual reports of the CoC Group to the Council, as well as any other considered relevant documents; believes that a dedicated online tool should be created, such as an archive of all documents and minutes in a consistent and user-friendly way, to avoid relying only on Council conclusions to retrieve essential information about tax policy at EU level;
Amendment 224 #
19 a. Welcomes the publication of the composition and contacts of the CoC Group in order to improve the transparency of its work; calls on the CoC to disclose attendees to, the topics of discussion and the conclusions adopted in its meetings; calls for full transparency of the methodology used for assessing third- country regimes in the EU listing process; invites the CoC to systematically release a comprehensive summary of its interactions with third countries, the subject matters discussed and the commitments made by third countries during the assessment process; calls on both the Council and the Commission to publish their preparatory notes, technical assessments and minutes;