At a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Mr Šemeta, EU Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-Fraud outlined plans for EU-US cooperation in tax and customs.

The plans include minimising bureaucracy, administrative duplication, and poorly coordinated regulation and enforcement between the EU and US for the purposes of safeguarding competitiveness and stimulating trade. Security requirements are also to the fore to encourage a smoother flow of legitimate goods.

Commissioner Šemeta also noted that both the EU and US must react to lessons learned in the Economic crisis and take both corrective and preventive measures to ensure sustainability of public finances.

A range of customs and tax measures are under consideration in pursuit of the objectives outlined by Commissioner Šemeta which include progressing a system of common rules for computing the tax base of companies with a taxable presence in the EU (the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base or CCCTB), extending the joint transfer pricing forum and the effective enforcement of intellectual property rights.

The Commissioner also talked about the need to maintain efforts in fighting tax evasion, fraud and harmful tax competition which requires transparency of tax systems, exchange of information between tax administrations and fair tax competition.

Chartered Accountants Ireland met with the Commissioner in May of this year to set out the Irish position in relation to the CCCTB.

For full details of the speech see http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/10/761