Labour MEP for Yorkshire & Humber
The fight continues against tax-dodging and secrecy for multinational corporations, with an important vote in Parliament yesterday. My colleague Anneliese Dodds MEP, together with Rachel Reeves MP, wrote about this in the Times this week. The full article is not free, but the extract below summarises the key issues: Labour MEPs have pressed the case […]
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been providing regular updates on the work Labour MEPs are doing to address the so-called VAT-MOSS issue, where originally well-intentioned changes to cross-border VAT rules have ended up affecting small and micro-businesses severely and disproportionately. I’ve raised the problem in conversations with Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of […]
The VAT-MOSS issue was raised today in a debate in the European Parliament by a number of MEPs. Encouragingly, European Commission Vice-President Timmermans, responding to the debate, confirmed that the Commission was taking these concerns very seriously, and that they had started to work on it even before David Cameron raised the issue at last […]
I wrote a detailed blog post in January on the issue of VAT changes and how they affect small and micro-businesses, and I promised to follow up with details of further developments as Labour MEPs kept up the pressure. In recent weeks, Labour MEPs — including myself and Anneliese Dodds, who leads for us on […]
The total amount lost to national exchequers through tax evasion and tax avoidance is greater than all the public deficits of national governments in Europe added together. Dodging tax, whether illegally or via legal loopholes, is immoral not only in itself but also because of the damage it does to our economy. So Labour MEPs […]
New Europe-wide rules for VAT came into force this month, having been debated and agreed by EU countries back in 2008. Among other things, the rules introduce a requirement for EU businesses selling digital services to charge VAT to online customers in other European countries at the rate that applies in the buyer’s country, rather […]
From 2015, EU countries have agreed a change to VAT rules in the single market. Until now, companies who sell across borders have usually been able to charge (and pay) VAT at the rate of their home country. This has allowed large multinational corporations to base themselves in countries with the lowest rates of VAT […]