> European leaders praised the decision, with Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz describing it as a "project close to my heart". French President Emmanuel Macron said the country had been pushing the idea for more than four years.
Of course countries with high taxes are all for raising taxes in countries where they are lower!
Now, unfortunately the article does not mention the interesting bit, which is that EU countries with lower corporation tax will therefore have to raise their rates. I'm thinking especially about Hungary and with the current tense relations I'm surprised that they agreed... What is the deal?
Your wondering is justified, and (like almost every other EU issue nowadays) Hungary was a holdout opposer, and used the vote to blackmail in other areas. They struck a deal in a "package" that includes Ukrain aid as well, in return they got some of the EU funds that was held back because of corruption. What a great happy Union this is.
Also the EU repeatedly called out Hungary for corruption but now Hungary is having its moment pointing that several member of the european parliaments have been caught in a very serious corruption scandal (and these are only those who got caught).
What a great happy honorable Union full of integrity we enjoy too.
They can use the EU as an excuse to raise taxes without taking the blame. Most people have no idea how the EU works and don't realize that that rule would not have been put in place unless their own government had supported it. That's what unanimity means.
Also at the end of the day most EU laws are aquiescence rules: if you have a specification for cucumbers it must be like this. But if you don't have such a spec (and producers in other countries aren't prevented from doing business with you) then you don't need to put the rule into place. After all, every EU "law" is actually a description which has be be implemented in each country by its legislature.
Ireland would prefer the jobs to the taxes. A country has to tune itself to keep people employed. Every country is different and small countries would be ruined by tax harmonisation. France et al give zero shits about Ireland, it wants the jobs Ireland has.
It severely reduces their ability to attract future business, as well as the likelihood that companies will continue to remain headquartered there. If you go there for tax benefits and those tax benefits go away, how likely are you to continue to bother with such complex structures?
At a certain point, where you have such different views in countries like Hungary (Hungary wants to placate Russia or something similar leading to not helping Ukraine, wants to block Finland and Sweden from Nato, wants to disable/reduce/destroy democracy in Hungary, wants all that stimulus money from the EU to keep coming in), we just have to say we'll go our way, you go yours. Unity required for so many decisions means the extreme minority of 1 can extract too much. Similar thing for Turkey and Nato.
Either that, or the groups (EU, NATO) will have to change their rules to allow a few no votes on things, or they'll just become broken orgs. I'm sure Russia would offer almost anything to the wanna-be dictators in Turkey and Hungary to get them to vote no on these things. These "complete agreement" democratic groups don't work when some leaders are dictators.
This is empirically not always true. Higher taxes can lead to lower tax revenues if it reduces the size of the pie when business go to tax friendly jurisdictions.
This can also work with income taxes. For example if you set income tax at 100%, you'd get 0 revenue probably because no one would work. This effect happens at values below 100%
Of course countries with high taxes are all for raising taxes in countries where they are lower!
Now, unfortunately the article does not mention the interesting bit, which is that EU countries with lower corporation tax will therefore have to raise their rates. I'm thinking especially about Hungary and with the current tense relations I'm surprised that they agreed... What is the deal?