EU Corporate tax madness, on the road to degrowth.

The FT scooped earlier this week that the EU was proposing an EU wide corporate tax for the largest corporations, which in EU-speak apparently means 50m euros. This is of course non-sense and damaging to European competitiveness. Quoting Bloomberg

Under the draft proposal, European companies and foreign-owned companies with a permanent establishment in the bloc and annual turnover of 50 million euros ($58.4 million), would be expected to pay a “lump-sum” annual contribution.

First of all, 50m EUR turnover, while not small, is hardly megacorp levels of wealth. Secondly, I am in principle negative to taxes on corporation that is levied on turnover rather than profit. This is an actively degrowth policy that will cause European corporations to invest less, hire fewer people and overall be less competative - the last thing we need right now.

What Europe needs is less taxes, less bureaucracy, streamlined rules cross borders and a pro growth mindset from regulators. That is not to say we should not be mindful of the well-being of consumers but harmful regulations must be stopped.

Here is an idea: Focus on regulation to get corporations to be more profitable, hire more employees and to be able to easily operate cross border within the EU. In a word, eu/acc.

Patrik

patrik[at]chrono.se