Corporate tax is back on the European agenda. France intends to use its presidency of the European Union later this year to pursue plans for a single, voluntary, corporation tax base for multinational companies.

The purpose of the common consolidated corporate tax base is that a company operating in several countries could choose to agree on one taxable profit total for the whole group. Tax revenues would then be charged and distributed among the countries where it operated, on the basis of a formula that took into account where the economic activity occurred and the domestic tax rate in each country.