I completely agree. European countries should start thinking more about their shared, common good than how to outrun their partners.
It might work if we started by establishing a framework of financial transfers between states, but without something like that in place Ireland and a bunch of smaller countries will keep vetoing attempts to normalise tax rates.
The Irish government hit upon a very clever strategy of collecting subsidies from the EU, spending that money in lieu of tax in its own territory, therefore being able to charge lower corporation tax, luring jobs away from the very economies that were paying those aformentioned subsidies in the first place! Unfortunately the other EU countries have figured out what was happening now.
Sure, if Ireland chooses to pass on this revenue it should be able to do so, but this should not stop France from taxing a Google that is doing business in France from an Ireland PO Box. The philosophy of the common market predates the global digital market and is no longer adequate.
This is like peeing your pants when it's cold outside, it's nice an warm at first :)
If you look at America you'll see what this race to the bottom does. Amazons new headquarter selection process is entirely about luring tax incentives out of various states.
These schemes are largely outlawed in the EU, for good reason. The play Ireland makes only works because most of the European governments have too much integrity to play this game, and refuse to be beholden by corporate interest.
With the tax equal anywhere in the EU, Ireland would be clearly the #1 place to locate the jobs for large international companies - particularly American ones.
As simonh noted in his reply to your comment, "Having those technical and finance jobs in Ireland builds up a reservoir of skilled labour in those areas that attracts companies. I saw this first hand at at a previous employer. We would preferentially move technology roles to Ireland - speak excellent English, in the EU, cheap office space and plenty of technically capable workers."
Apple's sweetheart deal with the tax authorities here is an embarrassment, but the lesson has been learnt and we won't see that kind of arrangement occurring again.
You have to think about edge cases, not introduce race conditions, handle buffer overflows. And the people trying to find bugs are extremely motivated!
An EU commissioner or some junior bureaucrat in Brussels has no incentives for quality drafting. They won't get a bonus if tax revenues go up by 10%, and they don't get much help to review drafts. They want to do a good job, sure, but they also want to go skiing, or have a cold, or want to catch up on Black Mirror.
Apple, Google, and Facebook each have very strong incentives to examine the law and identify ways to optimize their position. They can and do pay their employees, law firms, accounting firms, and other consultancies VERY large fees. Tax work to identify overspend (a shipment had the wrong tax category applied and was charged a higher rate, for example) typically earns 33% commission, as just one example.
You can just rule by decree, but then you drop all pretence of being a government of laws. You have to explain, in detail, what an internet company is, how you will categorize revenue, how you will attribute it to a certain country, etc etc.
For the EU, sure they don't have many big Internet firms. But they sell lots of cars, shoes, clothes, wine, robots, trains, etc to the US. They are putting all of that at risk to satisfy the pique of Bertelsmann and Holtzbrinck.
Trump's off the cuff tariffs are stupid and counter productive. So are the EU's attempts to hobble Google and Ireland.
The EU is bizzare to me in how much it legislates wrt to the internal affairs of its members, and how little influence it has on the things I mentioned above. Seems inside out.
The issue in part is that the euro, while great to use for consumers, wasn't thought out properly. The Euro Germany needs isn't the Euro Greece needs. And that has significant effects throughout local economies.
Tax competition can only be solved by throwing everything in one pot, and then dividing it again so everyone wins. But I can't see that happening with all the populism rising across the world.
South and East europe are damned to an eternally declining economy if they don't leave the EU. There is no interest from Germany or Frace to redistribute the wealth to the periphery so they can develop too. They took away their ability to devalue their currency, so all they're left with is adjusting tax rates. Bulgaria, Ireland and the Netherlands are prime examples of somewhat succeeding in that. Greece and Spain aren't allowed to do it because of austerity. If the EU decides for a flat tax rate, everyone but the big 2 are doomed.
Unity is already hard for a country like the US, where everyone speaks the same language and could move to a different state overnight with no issues. For a union like the EU, pretending there are no borders is outright lying. What do they expect to happen? Have the entire EU move to Berlin when the last jobs in the South die out? Turn everyone in the South to a bartender for the Germans and everyone East to a cheap subcontractor for car parts? It won't work.
I believe in a unified europe. I love freedom of movement. But that won't happen through the current EU and Brussels administration. We need a new, better union, or no union at all. What we have now clearly doesn't work.
Especially, since it would probably be handled by local tax authorities. So this would only be agreeing on what the corporate tax rate should be.
Most citizens (me included) don't know what corporate taxes are... or what the rate is :)
The French Finance Minister? A EU Commissioner?
Taxation without representation in a purportedly democratic polity tends to not go down well.