Barroso’s Share

In the excitement over the prudence shown by Britain’s biggest ever Tax and Waste Chancellor, you may have missed the following points: (1.7 MB)

About half of all significant new regulations affecting UK businesses originate in EU law"

Well at least someone has an idea of how much it is.

Payments to the EU "higher than expected in 2004/5", £3.7 Bn" - up from £2.4Bn in 2003/4 - but *exclude* the cost of EU external aid

This is of course the visible amount. I say visible because:

Some tax payments collected by the Government but then paid to the EU are subtracted as they do not score in national accounts.

This is for import tariffs, where our government acts as a tax collector for the EU. To con us all they do not count these as government income and expenditure. A little like the tax breaks the chancellor loves so much.

“Exports growth to non EU-markets remains significantly above that to EU destinations"

But without EU membership you will all lose your jobs because only trade with the EU counts. Or something like that. But most of all he says:

The Government is determined to continue to defend robustly the corporation tax system against legal challenges under EU law"

Good luck. You’ll need it because the European Court of Justice is slowing taking away your power over taxes as we speak. Constitution or not, the day will come when you will collect only the taxes allowed at the rates pre-determined by someone else. Enjoy your sole right to tax torture while it lasts.