EU Tax Compass is the ‘competitiveness’ strand of the European Tax Observatory (EUTO), an initiative launched by the European Parliament and developed in partnership with the European Commission. Now in its fifth year, the project is entering an ambitious new phase, with the aim of expanding data collection, deepening economic analysis and providing a cross-cutting overview of issues relating to direct and indirect taxation and competitiveness.
The consortium’s core mission is to establish a leading European platform where public decision-makers, journalists and experts can access information on tax policies based on rigorous and independent research. The research produced is intended to inform evidence-based policy recommendations for European institutions and Member States.
The project is organised into thematic Work Packages (WPs), each led by a member of the consortium. The IPP co-leads the central strand on corporate taxation and investment incentives. This strand aims to analyse how capital taxation and incentive schemes influence business activity and competitiveness at European level, whilst examining the trade-offs inherent in the design of incentives. The IPP also makes a direct contribution to Work Package 4, dedicated to environmental taxation, with a quantitative assessment of tax incentives for an innovative and sustainable economy. A major strength of the IPP’s participation lies in its access to high-quality French tax data. The project opens up the prospect of sharing access to this data with other members of the consortium, thereby enriching the common empirical base.
In addition to its own publications, the IPP contributes to work co-led by Bruegel (legal and economic constraints on the design of incentives, reform of capital gains tax, and taxation of economic rents).
