EU Tax Rates, Block To Bailouts?
It is likely a safe assumption that the support of government spending in nations with high tax rates is lower than support in countries where tax rates are low. A new study from UHYand international accounting operation show that tax…
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UHY does not say that high taxes levied on individuals are regressive and that point has been argued vigorously among economists since the recession began. It may not be a coincidence Spain, Germany, Ireland, the UK and France have high tax rates. These rates may be a reason that EU voters generally protest bailout programs for weak member nations like Greece. These citizens might fairly assume that the costs of bailouts will hurt government balance sheets. This, in turn, may be solved through higher tax rates meant to balance the books of nations like Germany and France.
It is too late to use tax policy to encourage support among German voters to gain acceptance of the nation’s participation in another round of Greek financing. The tax rates do show that the EU tension may be driven by a wide variation in the rate individuals pay from country to country. The EU can hardly act as a block when it has a common currency but a wide variation in the level at which workers are taxed. It is yet one more example of the fact the reason for financial disunity among Europe’s nations is because there is not common ground among the way that earners are treated.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
