madam president i hope that when i give my explanation of vote i do not provoke the same sort of petty responses that one can expect from the other side of the house
i think we all agree that we need to tackle tax evasion but at the same time we need to understand that in the case of those entrepreneurs who work hard who create jobs and wealth for others and then are taxed heavily for doing so it is quite understandable when they legally want to transfer their money to lower-tax regimes
i think we all agree that we need to fight fraud but let us not crack down on legal transfers of money
we may think that the result of such actions will lead to the removal of low-tax regimes and that we will all have to pay higher taxes and i know that is something that particularly on the other side of the house people welcome
but we also have to understand the unintended consequences of our actions sometimes and if we seek to crack down too much on lower-tax regimes and lower-tax areas rather than just driving money from one country to another we will drive much-needed capital much-needed innovation and much-needed entrepreneurship out of europe altogether
