European corporate tax base: making business easier and cheaper

Costs saving up to 3 billions EUR

The European Commission has proposed a common system for calculating the tax base of businesses operating in the EU. The aim of this proposal is to significantly reduce the administrative burden.

The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) offers companies one single set of corporate tax base rules to follow and the possibility of filing a single, consolidated tax return with one administration for their entire activity within the EU.

The CCCTB is compatible with the rethinking of tax systems and the shift to more growth-friendly and green taxation advocated in the Europe 2020 strategy.

The CCCTB will be available for all sizes of companies; MNEs would be relieved from the fact of certain tax obstacles in the single market and SMEs would incur less compliance costs when they decided to expand commercially to another Member State. The system is optional.

Harmonisation will only involve the computation of the tax base and will not interfere with financial accounts. Therefore, Member States will maintain their national rules on financial accounting and the CCCTB system will introduce autonomous rules for computing the tax base of companies.

Proposal for a Council Directive on a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base [434 kB]

Vladimíra Drbalová
International Organisations  and EU Affairs