Brussels, 11/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - At the 7 October 2010 meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, EU ministers adopted without debate a new regulation to increase the fight against VAT (value-added tax) fraud.
The main new area of the regulation is the setting up of a group of tax officials from all the Member States called 'Eurofisc' to combat VAT fraud through direct access to a series of information about tax-payers from their colleagues' national tax databases. Using a multilateral early warning system, fast exchange and use of information should enable the various tax authorities in Eurofisc to receive timely warnings and receive the further details they need to coordinate investigations. This should make it easier to carry out investigations in more than one country at the same time about suspected VAT fraud, particularly carousel fraud (sending goods from one EU country to another to wriggle out of having to pay out the VAT levied on customers to a state).
Agreement in principle was reached on the new regulation at an ECOFIN Council in June 2010 (see EUROPE 10155). It is a re-writing of Regulation 1798/2003 and sets out situations in which Member States are expected to spontaneously provide information, how the information is to be supplied and returned and when Member States can carry out multilateral investigations. (F.G. trans fl)