Possibilities of harmonization of direct taxes in the EU

Abstract

Currently, indirect taxes in the EU are highly harmonized, however, harmonization of direct taxes is still a very complex problem. Many EU member states refuse to give up their tax sovereignty, which would become considerably limited because of the har¬monization of direct taxes. Today, attention is paid to the harmonization of the tax base of corporate income tax, while a number of ways are under consideration. The European Council has issued a draft of Directive for a common consolidated tax base of corporate income tax in 2011 and updated in 2012. This draft must be approved by all member states, but some of them, however, have expressed on the draft in negative way. Because of the severity of this problems, the authors decided to focus on this topic within this article, which deals with the calculation of the tax base by the laws of the Slovak Republic and by Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB); and evaluate whether the tax harmonization of direct taxes would be advantageous for the particular business.

Keywords

• Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base
• tax base
• tax expenses
• tax harmonization
• taxes