The Threat of Fiscal Harmonization
Taxation is often the key element in shaping and reshaping political regimes.
Many influential voices have, in the recent past, spoken in favor of the opportunity to give the European Union a coherent and centralized tax policy. The keyword used by these people is “harmonization”. They share the opinion that all member states should conform their own tax systems to the directions of Brussels bureaucrats — as already happens for VAT. Some of them have pushed the argument even further, to the point that the Union should be given the power to levy taxes on its own, and not just to tell member states how to do that. What if they succeeded? How likely is such prospect?
Read the paper: The Threat of Fiscal Harmonization (12 pages, PDF)
2007