>I'm trying to question the core assertion you made, that the US federal relationship is not comparable to the EU's relationship to it's member "states" Honest

>I'm trying to question the core assertion you made, that the US federal relationship is not comparable to the EU's relationship to it's member "states" Honestly that's a weird thing to challenge. There's a long list of differences which you can easily discover by googling. Also, "everything should work the same as it works in the US" is not an argument. Even if the EU were analogous to the US Federal Government, then that could just as well argue that the US ought to follow the same rules on taxation as the EU rather than vice versa. >Yes one is a federation and one is a confederacy, but what about that relationship makes it relevant to taxation? How about the fact that the EU doesn't have the power to collect taxes? (There's the special 'tax' paid by EU employees, but citizens of EU countries don't pay taxes to the EU, and the EU has no powers to levy such taxes.) >Why is it unreasonable for a country that hosts lots of EU institution to receive any tax income from that activity? It's not inherently unreasonable, it just has a tendency to lead to conflicts of interest and conflicts between member states. One thing to bear in mind is that member states within the EU have much greater powers (as full nation states) than 'states' within the US system, so it's important to avoid this kind of thing. The EU can't just whip member states into line the way that the US Federal Government can usually force a state to do whatever it wants. There's a more thorough explanation in the comment I linked earlier: https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/4968 https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/4968