RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Taxation of Innovation in Europe: Outlines of Community and Comparative Tax Law

Università degli Studi di Pavia

Abstract

“To achieve sustainable global competitiveness, the EU has no choice but to become a vibrant knowledge economy. That is why, in launching the new Lisbon partnership for growth and jobs, the European Council singled out knowledge and innovation for growth as one of three main areas for action. (...) Coordination between the Member State, regional and European levels is needed and European action should support and complement the efforts of national authorities and the private sector”. That is what the European Commission said [COM (2005) 488 final], noticing the insufficient growth of investment for R&S in EU Member Countries.
An unfit performance in that field involves very high costs for Europe, because it increases the gap between Europe and the Countries which traditionally attract the most research and development investments, like the United States and Japan, but also new competitors like China, India and Brazil.
Taxation may have a key function in the Lisbon Agenda achievement, playing a decisive role to create a favourable regulatory environment for research and innovation activity development.
First of all, the research program outlines the European tax framework for innovation, because a EU tax policy is necessary to take up a competitive challenge on a global scale; then it analyses the tax systems of some EU Member Countries, Italy included.
The research lines of development (from the strictly legal point of view) are three: >>>

Principal Investigator

Silvia Cipollina Università degli Studi di PAVIA

Research Objectives

The research program aims to analyse the current taxation of innovation state of art in Europe, from the strictly legal point of view.
To foster the European research and innovation development, it is of course necessary to further sustainable tax policies, both on European level, and on domestic level.
In fact, taxation is one of the strategic factors for the R&D activities investment decisions.
However, both the economic analysis profile and the formulation of proposals to arrange taxation in a innovation-friendly way lie outside the aims of the present research.
The research program has, rather, a prodromic aim, instrumental in incoming reform interventions contents: to reconstruct, de iure condito, the current innovation taxation outlines.
It does not exist, clearly, only one innovation taxation in Europe.
On one hand, there is the pattern stated by the European Institutions to promote – especially from the general taxation point of view – the systems convergence and simplification, both in the direct tax sector, and in the indirect tax sector.
On the other hand, there are domestic tax policies, promoting research and innovation activities: these policies may turn into, in different way, a favourable common tax “environment” arrangement and also in specific incentive measures.
Therefore, the research program has two sectorial aims: 1) to monitor European tax policy, to focus its development lines and to >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Article 3, paragraph 1, letter n), of EC Treaty explicitly places between the Union actions: “the research and technological development promotion”.
To assure this aim effective achievement, an intermediate revision of the so called “Lisbon agenda” was made, the widespread reform project, started up by the European Council on March 2000.
In fact, it was observed that, as regards Lisbon aims, the (made) progresses are dissimilar, both because of the difficult economic situation and because of actions coordinationless.
In the 2 February 2005 Communication to the Spring European Council “Working together for growth and jobs - A new start for the Lisbon Strategy” (adopted by President Barroso with Vice-President Verheugen, COM (2005) 24), the European Commission reasserted the renovated engagement necessity, also because: “The challenges to win seem to be even more urgent, faced with population aging phenomenon and global scale concurrence”. This “no-Europe cost”, id est the lack of initiative cost, is high and quantifiable.
The Commission observes that the former Lisbon agenda and its revival strategy aims imply a partnership action, which involves European Institutions, Governments and national-regional-local levels administrations, welfare parties and society.
In particular, to assure the effective implementation of a Lisbon renovated strategy, the Commission and Member Countries will have an active and synergetic role.
In the new >>>