A Communication to the EU parliament was issued on 5 April setting out officialdom's view of how this project is progressing.

The main conclusions of the Communication are:

• The CCCTB should be simple and uniform with as few as possible exceptions;
• The tax base should be consolidated and optional for companies;
• The rules for calculating the CCCTB should be self-standing and not formally linked to the international accounting standards (IAS/IFRS);
• The current approach of working in close cooperation with Member States experts, business and academia is the most effective;

A worrying aspect of the Commission's work to date is that it seems to want to set aside mechanisms which already contribute to tax simplicity and fairness within the EU – the Double Taxation Agreements which already exist between countries, and the International Accounting Standards which apply. By treating companies with common ownership in different countries as one entity, an individual Member State's right to define its own tax boundaries, as recently confirmed in the Marks and Spencer Case in the European Court of Justice, will be considerably diluted.

In its Communication, the Commission has tried to emphasise that the actual setting of tax rates was outside the scope of the project. But it has also suggested that Member States might have to adjust their rates to compensate when the CCCTB was used.

The Communication states that if a CCCTB can ever be agreed upon, it will be optional. Yet another set of tax rules!