Business taxation for the 21st century : the Commission would like to hear your views.

Global developments and technological progress, in particular digitalisation, change societies.Taxation has a role to play to ensure Europe seizes the opportunities offered by these developments whilst securing its social market economy. To deliver on this ambition, the European Commission will take stock of the discussion in international fora on reforming the international tax system and present its vision for a way forward to ensure that the EU business taxation system fits the modern economy

Context - roadmap

Our societies and economies are undergoing transitions shaped by significant global developments and technological advancements, such as digitalisation, globalisation, climate change and population aging. Our existing business tax framework is ill equipped to face these developments and its sustainability is now put into question. These challenges are now further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fair and efficient taxation will be even more important in the months and years ahead, as the EU and the global community seek to recover from the fallout of the COVID-19 crisis.

As President von der Leyen observed in her Political Guidelines: “the EU and international corporate tax systems are in urgent need of reform. They are not fit for the realities of the modern global economy and do not capture the new business models in the digital world”. Too often, tax policy attempts to catch-up with a changing environment, and focuses on responding to specific problems, which often means we lag behind events. It also results in a patchwork of complex measures forming a business tax environment not sufficiently conducive to investment and growth.

Beyond addressing current challenges, it will be necessary to set out a vision for business taxation in the medium to longer term.

This initiative will complement other EU initiatives in the area of taxation, such as the 2020 Action Plan on fair and simple taxation supporting the recovery strategy; and the 2020 Communication on Tax Good Governance in the EU and beyond, which set out the priority areas for action to enhance tax good governance standards and ensure fair taxation at global level. It will take stock of discussions at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the reform of the corporate taxation framework and articulate this with action at EU level. It will take also stock of the Commission’s pending proposals, such as the CCCTB, and propose the way forward towards an EU corporate tax framework fit for the 21st century

Feedback period

04 March 2021 - 01 April 2021 (midnight Brussels time)

This roadmap is open for feedback for 4 weeks. Feedback will be taken into account for further development and fine tuning of the initiative.

>>>> Give your feedback on: Business taxation for the 21st century (europa.eu)

The Commission will summarise the input received in a synopsis report explaining how the input will be taken on board and, if applicable, why certain suggestions can't be taken up. Feedback received will be published on this site and therefore must adhere to the feedback rules.

Source : European Commission, Business taxation for the 21st century