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Comment by barrkel | Hacker News Reader

The EU doesn't control member country tax rates and most of its regulations are to harmonise products sold within the market - ie products would have to meet the regulations to be sold in the block no matter whether they are produced inside or outside the EU.

Other regulations affecting things like working hours or environment wouldn't necessarily be great for the UK to cut back on. These are designed to prevent beggar-thy-neighbour policies that turn into a race to the bottom in a zero sum game. It's better for everyone to agree to the same rules here, game theoretically.

And less freedom to hire people from the continent would just push up labour costs.

So personally I don't think there's any upside from Brexit here. That would have to come from somewhere entirely hypothetical, like significantly better trade deals than the EU currently has.

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I don't know why you are getting downvoted. Worker protections like guaranteed holidays and unlimited sick days might be the first things to go "to remain more competitive", which is an obvious BS. The same with environment protections - someone made an argument to me, saying that EU is bad because it stops UK from fishing certain types of fish in the north sea......yeah, of course it does, because we were overfishing massively and in a decade there would be none left. Even if UK leaves EU that won't change - it's not like you can magically ignore environmental regulations when you are not part of EU, especially if we are talking about international waters.

saying that EU is bad because it stops UK from fishing certain types of fish in the north sea......yeah, of course it does, because we were overfishing massively and in a decade there would be none left

Errr, that's not true at all. What the EU said was that British fishermen can't fish British waters, but Spanish fisherman can overfish here as they please. Leaving the EU, whatever else it does good or bad, is a massive win for our marine ecosystem.

That's also not true at all - mostly because the North Sea is not "British waters". It's international waters, so if there is a quota for each member state to fish there, then sure, it can lead to a situation where British fishermen have already caught their allowed number of fish, but Spanish fishermen haven't.

Any win for the Britain's fishing industry is not actually a win, IMO; it's just a tragedy of the commons.

I'm not sure ducking out of fishing regulation is good for any marine ecosystems.

If British fishermen weren't getting the best deal out of EU fishing quotas, then it can't have helped that the British representative on the EU Fisheries Committee was one Nigel Farage, who never turned up to represent them, but was still happy to use them for Brexit propaganda.

The EU very much wants to control member state tax rates, hence the recent Apple case and the VAT changes they made.

There are lots of EU regulations that are basically pointless busywork. Look at the cookie rules. Huge cost and expense to implement millions of warnings, no benefit, and their plan is to double down on them.

They didn't make VAT changes in the Irish case. They ruled that Ireland didn't apply its own laws fairly and with equal treatment. It's a highly contentious issue and is being appealed by Ireland, particularly since it's retrospective and involves a massive clawback. It makes the rule of law look shaky in Ireland. It's not likely to stand as is for that reason alone, IMO.

Some countries - particularly ones with larger economies - want to stop smaller economies undercutting their tax bases. The current laws mean that profits get taxed in the country where the company doing the sales is based. There is some talk of changing this so that the profit is more balanced based on where the sales are targeted. I think this is fair; this again comes under beggar-thy-neighbour common rules.

My sentence was perhaps overly hard to parse. It was a list of two things, related only by the general area of tax. Not that the Irish case is VAT related. Indeed it's not.

I was talking about the change to EU wide VAT rules that force sellers to charge VAT at the buyer rate not the seller rate.

Exactly. There is a difference between a EU political system and a EU free market as there is a difference between EU and EEA.

I havent heard a single person who are against the free market. But UK is split between some / most elite who dont want their nation to fell into others hand, the lower class who gets absolutely no benefits at all, ( They are poor with the free market, and they will STILL be poor if UK leave ), and basically the middle class who think money is the most important factor, and are willing to trade their nationalities for more money or higher standard of living.

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