SCHEVENINGEN, The Netherlands, Sept 11 (AFP) - Britain remains opposed to any attempts to harmonise taxes across the European Union, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said on Saturday as EU ministers gathered to discuss common rules for taxing company profits.
"We believe that tax competition is the best way forward... we will not support any move toward tax harmonisation," said Brown, as EU finance ministers went into a second day of talks in the Dutch town of Scheveningen.
The European Commission has submitted a proposal under which the basic rules for calculating company taxes would be harmonised throughout the 25 member states, but the rates at which they were levied would be left up to individual countries.
However Brown made it clear that Britain would oppose the idea.
"We will resist these changes," he told journalists on the sidelines of the Scheveningen talks.