New European Union tax rules introduced in January with the stated aim of moving closer to a 'unified' tax system (but which really hand multinational corporations a huge advantage) have already plunged thousands of small businesses into bankruptcy, with thousands more expected to fold as awareness of the change to the way VAT must be paid increases. Research has shown that incompetence on the part of government revenue agencies has increased the problems of small businesses that cannot afford to employ a full time tax accountant.
After an eight-year consultation between E U bureaucrats and corporate lawyers and finance officers, from which organizations representing small businesses were excluded, the EU introduced new rules on VAT returns at the beginning of this year, which required digitally delivered services to apply VAT according to the customer’s, not the supplier’s location.
Designed to prevent large businesses locating themselves in VAT-competitive territories but totally ineffective at doing that, it had the (intended?) effect of burying small businesses under a hill of bureaucracy, forcing them to access the data required to prove the customer’s location, figure out which of more than 80 VAT rates to apply to each transaction, and issue an invoice in the correct language, currency and layout.
Unable to afford the software developed to help corporate business to deal with the workload, thousands of small business and sole traders have closed or abandoned their enterprises. Most of those who have continued to trade have either moved to third party platforms, losing up to 70 percent of their total revenue (not just non-domestic sales) in commission, or spent thousands on software.
“The human cost to these businesses is vast”, Clare Josa is co-founder of EU VAT Action commented for EU Observer. "The only reason the Digital Single Market is still functioning is because awareness levels are below 5 percent, so most businesses are continuing to trade under the former system. As awareness rises, the damage will soar."
According to Josa, the misery isn’t confined to the legislation alone. Further confusion has been created by the member states interpreting the law in different ways, and by some tax authorities simply making blunders.
What strikes me is the current crisis has arisen because tax collection agencies are clueless (yes I know but in this context we have to be more specific) about how the new laws should be operated. When the dumb-arse civil servants have worked it out there will be a plethora of prosecutions for tax fraud.
Source: E U Observer
More On Europe's bureaucratic Dictatorship
The E U is becoming a bureaucratic dictatorship
Here in the UK and around Europe the eurozone crisis is eroding our democracy. How do we withdraw our consent from being governed like this?
That is the question being asked by UKIP, the UK Independence Party and increasingly by rank and file members and backbench MPs in David Cameron's Conservative Party. Leaders of the European neo Nazi superstate movement and the Bureau(c)rats of Brussels like to pain Britain as the only naysayer, the only nation dragging it's feet in the headlong charge to create a pan - European superstate that would involve the abolition of national sovereignty and national identities. It is not true but when did bureaucrats ever feel obliged to tell the truth if it gets in the way of their goal of advancing the control freak agenda.
Commenting on an article last year ago on British Foreign Policy the thrust of which was a complaint that the government paid too much heed to voters reluctance to see our nation drawn into the integrationist push of other E U leaders , one commenter who blogs for a national newspaper wrote that such exercises missed the vital point: that much of the underlying logic of foreign policy work was in fact about supporting British Parliamentary democracy not undermining it. It is the job of our diplomats to defend British interests, not lobby on behalf of those who would incorporate us in a single European nation. Our governments have failed us in ceding much of that foreign policy role to Brussels and the global governance wishing internationalists.
The fact is the expansion of government and public sector work throughout the past four decades has created unsustainable economies. No wonder GDP (Gross domestic product, a measure of how much money moves around the domestic economy) rather than the surplus or deficit of exports over imports or vice versa has become the measure of economic strength. Most of the growth that underwrote the burgeoning personal, business and government debts which drove the boom of the mid 1990s to 2007 was illusory, the result of governments printing bonds to borrow cash against future expectations and then pumping that cash into their domestic economies, grabbing about half of it back in tax with one hand and giving the same cash out again as welfare benefits, salaries for tax eaters or to fund worthless infrastructure projects.
Is the sheer complexity of decisions facing national leaders in a democracy too difficult for political leaders or is dealing with greedy, selfish, ignorant or pig-headed voters too onerous a task. Or, more likely, are they all just lazy incompetents drunks like Jean Claude Juncker, cunt-struck sex addicts like Dominique Strauss Khan, neo fascists like Martin Schulz or corrupt money - grubbers like Jose Miguel Barosso. Any way their efforts only seem to produce stupid, counter productive results? And often in the wings we have people who style themselves "progressive liberals" calling for a totalitarian world government to save us from the mess the fearful and pusillanimous academics and media luvvies would have us believe we are in.
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The E U is becoming a bureaucratic dictatorship
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