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CCCTB plans are “back on the agenda”

Monday 29 March 2010 - by Iain Anderson

Plans to revive the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base are well underway in Brussels with new proposals due in the autumn but policy-watchers feel the dream of a single pan European structure remains some years away.

The European Commission is currently undertaking a detailed impact assessment around the initial plans for CCCTB which were last driven forward in the early part of 2008 – only to be quashed by the French Presidency in the second half of that year.

General Electric European tax policy director Will Morris says: “There is no doubt that with the new EU Commission the CCCTB is back on the agenda and all major corporates that operate across the EU need to take the debate seriously. While there are many obstacles to reform, there is a new momentum to the policy debate once again.”

The CCCTB is a major initiative of the Commission which was begun under the previous Commissioner for Taxation László Kovács. The new Commissioner Algirdas Šemeta has pledged to continue the reform.

Under CCCTB, companies and complex pan-EU groups would follow the same rules for calculating the tax base for all their EU-wide activities. The regime would apply to EU companies that have to pay corporate taxes, as well as third country entities which are subject to tax in EU member states.



Member states would be likely to continue to set their own national tax rates but the consolidated regime would determine the tax ‘base’ and the allocation of tax revenue between member states.

Many states with low corporate tax rates have been resistant to the development of the CCCTB. Ireland is expected to resist new proposals when they reach EU policymakers in the autumn of 2010.

Morris says: “There has been a lot of debate around whether or not the CCCTB will end up being an optional system. It would obviously be much more attractive to companies if they could decide whether or not they would join the system.”


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