Each week we put one of your questions about the EU referendum to our panel of small business experts and economists. Do you have a question about how the referendum could affect small businesses? If so, submit it here. This week our panel tackle the issue of corporate taxes.

How might Brexit influence UK legislation on tax avoidance? Could it be easier for large corporations to avoid tax in the UK if legislation amended to bring UK law in accordance with EU law is reversed?

Daniel Gros

Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies , adviser to the European Parliament and member of the advisory scientific committee of the European Systemic Risk Board and the Euro 50 Group of eminent economists

Brexit would not have any direct impact on UK legislation regarding international cooperation in the area of corporate taxation. However, in the event of an out vote, the UK legislator would have a greater degree of freedom in changing national tax legislation. As the EU has no direct competence in this field, the increased degree of freedom would be marginal. But, politically, outside of the EU, the UK might then feel freer to follow different routes.

One approach might be to lower corporate tax rates and try to compete aggressively with the Irish. The result might be that UK companies pay lower taxes, but foreign corporates might be tempted to shift their income to the UK to benefit from lower rates. However, for a relatively large economy such as the UK, the loss of domestic tax income might not be fully offset by attracting profit shifting from abroad.

The more important consequence of Brexit might be that the UK would no longer participate in various intra-EU information exchanges and that the commission would no longer have any enforcement powers in areas such as state aid, which have recently been used to attack special tax deals in Ireland. Notice that in these cases the commission ‘forces’ the Irish government to levy higher taxes from companies domiciled in Ireland. The Irish government would gain large revenues from this intervention. After Brexit the UK would thus be freer to hand out tax benefits to large corporations, making tax avoidance easier. But this also does not have to happen.

The only certain result from Brexit is that it will be up to future British governments whether and how it wants to pursue the fight against tax avoidance and that this might become more cumbersome.

Sebastian Dullien

Senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and professor of international economics at HTW Berlin, University of Applied Sciences. His research focuses on European integration, international macroeconomics, and financial market regulation

Directly, a British decision to leave the EU will have no impact on corporations’ ability to avoid taxes. Corporate tax harmonisation in the EU has not progressed very far, and taxation is not an EU competency. Many of the tax avoidance schemes that have made the news over the past years have been constructed within the existing rules of EU member states, neither despite nor because of EU rules, but because of the idiosyncrasies and complexities of the member states’ tax legislations (including those of the UK).

Moreover, many of the international initiatives to limit tax avoidance have taken place within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , an organisation of industrialised countries of which the UK will remain a member if it leaves the EU.

Britain has all the sovereignty to limit tax avoidance today as a member of the EU, and this will not change after a Brexit.

What might change is the political climate for clamping down on tax avoidance. After a vote for Brexit, the British financial industry would certainly have more difficulties selling financial services in the continental market. The question is what kind of new business model Britain would try to construct. One option would be to move closer to becoming a tax haven itself and try to attract international capital that way. Britain is already seen by many as a tax haven for multinationals, and its overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands feature are often criticised as being locations for tax avoidance.

Bankers might well lobby a British government after a Brexit to move further down this road to attract more foreign capital. Being free of peer pressure from other European capitals, it is conceivable that Downing Street then gives in to these pressures from banks. But ultimately, this remains a British decision.

Panos Koutrakos

Professor of EU Law and Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at City University London and a barrister at Monckton Chambers, he has written widely on various aspects of EU law, including trade, international treaties, and foreign affairs. He has given evidence at the Commons foreign affairs select committee on the costs and benefits of EU membership for the UK

The EU has been exercising pressure on member states to tackle tax evasion. Only last week, the European Commission announced proposals which, if adopted, would make multinational corporations declare how much tax they pay in which EU member state, as well as their tax affairs in tax havens. It has also proposed tightening up anti-tax avoidance legislation and exchange of information between the member states.

The EU has also been active in its efforts to get member states to tackle the problems raised by tax havens by, for example, blacklisting them. This move has been resisted by the UK.

The EU is not the only external influence on UK tax avoidance policy. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is also influential in shaping national tax policies. In practice, it is easier for large corporations to engage in tax avoidance and minimise their tax liabilities when they are dealing only with national authorities. It is, for instance, the EU’s intervention through its state aid powers that has made some businesses back taxes in the Netherlands and Luxembourg (the taxes that other multinationals have paid in Ireland and Luxembourg are currently also under investigation).

Being inside the EU, therefore, not only puts pressure to keep fighting tax avoidance, but it also gives the UK considerable leverage in its tax dealings with large corporations. Whether pressure from the EU could still influence the UK if it were to leave would depend on the post-Brexit arrangement that would govern the EU-UK relationship.

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