A news article today on the EU looking to levy taxes directly to raise income rather than through the current method of a levy per country raised my interest in EU finances enough to have a look at the current funding measures.

Firstly, the news itself.

Doug Carswell has this little piece :

EU Commission want to tax us directly

The European Commission is apparently considering direct taxation. One more reason to quit.

Remind me when and why we signed up for this nonsense?

With Brussels always wanting yet more power and taxes, it seems there’s only one sort of EU on offer – no matter what successive UK governments (and the Foreign Office that runs them) have promised us.

So, when do we get that long overdue in / out referendum?

Which then led me to the linked BBC article (emphasis mine) :

The European Commission wants EU member states to consider allowing it to levy direct taxes – a move that could ease the burden on national budgets.

The EU’s Budget Commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski, said he would present some options next month for direct EU taxes.

…

The 27 EU member states pay a fixed contribution to the EU budget, based on their gross domestic product and a percentage of their sales tax (VAT).

This year Germany’s transfer to the EU budget – the largest contribution – is about 21bn euros (£17.5bn).

As an aside, I find it interesting there that they mention Germany’s contribution but choose to ignore the €13.5 billion stolen from the UK each year.

The main point of the BBC quote though, is that the current levy includes a percentage of VAT revenue.

After some hunting, I found the relevant EU budget document which gives the current levy as 0.3% of VAT revenue unless you happen to be lucky enough to live in one of the following places :

For the period 2007-2013 only, the rate of call of the VAT resource for Austria shall be fixed at 0,225 %, for Germany at 0,15 % and for the Netherlands and Sweden
at 0,10 %.

To my simple mind, a percentage levy on VAT is already a direct tax on all EU citizens as it is directly related to individual spending is it not?

The other interesting point from the budget document is that there is also a levy on customs duties which suggests to me that quite a large sum each year from our already expensive tobacco and alcohol taxes also goes to the EU.

All of which suggests that we already have direct taxation even though the EU (and others) never actually describe it that way with the weasel words of levies and national contributions.

The best bit for me (in a ‘well fuck me – they are stealing from me again’ way) is that the pending increase in VAT to 20%, which is calculated to increase revenues by £13 billion also means an extra €47 million or so will be going to the EU each year rather than contributing to our own fiscal black hole as we were told.

Damned socialists!