Brussels, 20/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission will announce its plans for VAT in 2016, the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Andrus Ansip, told a plenary debate of the EP, on Monday 18 May.
“The Commission has already started working on the VAT regime, including looking at the application of reduced VAT rates”, said the Commissioner, adding that the Commission would announce its plans next year. He said that a reduction of VAT on electronic books ('e-books') and the online press would be re-examined at the same time.
The European Commission has been under increasing pressure since the verdict returned in March of this year by the Court of Justice of the EU, stating that France and Luxembourg could no longer continue to apply reduced VAT rates on electronic books (see EUROPE 11268). The Court thereby upheld the position of the Commission which, in 2012, found that by applying reduced rates on 'e-books', the two countries were in breach of the VAT directive (2006/112/EC) and creating competition distortions within the EU, to the detriment of operators in the other member states (the VAT rate applied is that of the country of the service provider, not of the country of the customer).
The Commissioner for Taxation, Pierre Moscovici, who has already been asked about this subject by the European Parliament, explained to the MEPs that excluding electronic books from the scope of application of reduced VAT rates had been unanimously approved by the Council (see EUROPE 11284). (Elodie Lamer)