This time of year always has its priorities: on taxation, Commissioner Moscovici listed the dossiers that have made it to the top of the agenda, during an exchange with journalists on Tuesday 5 September.
The first is the double VAT package, which will be “presented in October”, he said. Firstly, this package will deal with the definitive VAT regime. “The EU has been working on a temporary VAT regime for 25 years and it is quite frankly unsound”, he said. The aim is to harmonise the rules to “create a single VAT space and ensure that cross-border operations are dealt with in the same way as domestic transactions”, he explained.
Secondly, the Commission intends to “give the member states back powers” on reduced rates of VAT.
The second priority will be the taxation of digital. “Certain companies, starting with the GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple), pay little or no tax in Europe, because they have no headquarters or shops on European soil”, Moscovici explained, giving an example. “It's the end of the holiday season, millions of people have used (online hotel reservation service: Ed) booking.com. Booking.com gets 20% of the price of each unit purchased and on this 20%, it paid 0% tax”, he said. Under the aegis of the OECD, the aim will now to be to define the concept of 'digital presence'. However, the EU “must also make progress on its own, and further”. “The G20 is still the forum where tax transparency advances are piloted. The OECD makes extremely useful contributions, but it does so with its own criteria and, in some cases, within its own limitations, which are related to the perimeter of its members, including the Americans”, the Commissioner explained, when asked about the possibility of the US hampering progress on the dossier.
Moscovici went on to say that for his own part, he was “picking up on a degree of impatience from the member states; so, we cannot wait for the OECD to finalise its work”.
“Either we do something in the framework of the CCCTB (the proposed common consolidated corporate tax base), or something specific. Personally, I am deeply committed to the CCCTB”, he said.
Finally, his last priority is the European list of tax havens, awaited at the end of the year. “I expect ambition from the member states, I will not accept the European list being limited” as the OECD's list, which features only one jurisdiction. “I want a fuller, more realistic list. Obviously, the best possible list would be a very short one, as this would mean that things have been done”, he concluded, pointing out that the process of the list had prompted Singapore to vote through a number of taxation texts. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)