Tiesioginiai mokesčiai Europos Sąjungoje ; The direct taxes in european union

Abstract

An overview of the tax regimes in the EU confirms that EU countries apply quite similar tax systems, while only the VAT and the excise duties have been harmonised at EU level (by fixing the minimal tax rate, the base, etc.). However, tax harmonisation itself is understood as a centrally applied tax base across the EU and a procedure of unifying tax rates and the rules of tax payment. The EU acknowledges that different rules of calculating the corporate tax has hold over the movement of capital. Capital movement, which is determined by tax rules, is not considered to be "free," and distribution of resources, conditioned by such capital movement, is not viewed as being effective. It is maintained that different tax rules inhibit an effective distribution of resources or the way they would distribute in line with differences in productivity when "other circumstances," i.e. taxes, were equal. Admittedly, in the case of the corporate tax, harmonisation has not been very wide, except the enacted harmonisation of mergers, the tax base of parent companies, and interest and royalty payments. (Directive 90/434/EEC on the common system of taxation applicable to mergers, divisions, transfers of assets and exchanges of shares concerning companies of different Member States, supplemented by Directive 90/435/EEB on the common system of taxation applicable in the case of parent companies and subsidiaries of different Member States, and Directive 2005/19/EK partially replacing Directive 90/434/EEC on the common system of taxation applicable to mergers, divisions, transfers of assets and exchanges of shares concerning companies of different Member States, as well as Directive 2003/49/EB on a common system of taxation applicable to interest and royalty payments). All these documents are expatiated in this paper. More over, the case-law of the Court of Justice is discussed to reveal the problems and the lack of regulation in direct taxes in European Union.