ECIPE Seminar: EU Tax Reform – are Digital Companies Paying their Fair Share of Tax?

The EU is breaking new ground on corporate taxation. It has for long been advancing proposals for a common consolidated tax base for companies and, for some time now, the EU has taken the global lead on matters of tax-base erosion. The latest idea is to put new taxes on specifically digital companies.

Are these proposals really reflecting the real situation of how companies pay tax in Europe? While there is a view among some countries in the EU that corporate tax revenues in Europe should be reallocated between member states in order to reflect where profits have been generated, the proposals for new corporate taxes claim that companies are paying too little tax. Moreover, it is argued that it is digital firms in particular that is paying too little tax. Do these claims really stand up to scrutiny?