Down with corporate taxes

  • 2004-02-05
  • From wire reports
TALLINN - In its latest issue, the London-based magazine The Economist has advised the governments of European Union countries to follow Estonia's example and ditch corporate taxes.

As the publication notes, existing EU members are worried about Estonia joining the EU in May. It says that rather than worry all governments would do better to follow the Baltic country's example: ditch corporate taxes and rely more on taxing consumption.
One approach, The Economist advises, would be greater reliance on value-added taxes, which are easy to collect and hard to evade. The magazine also suggests paying more attention to taxing individual incomes.
Getting rid of corporate taxes would save the vast sums spent by taxmen and firms in the cat-and-mouse game of tax avoidance and eliminate any excuse for the complex corporate structures that companies - such as Enron and Parmalat - use to play this game. As recent scandals have shown, these complexities mislead not just the taxman but can do even more damage by misleading shareholders.