On Tuesday 17 December, the European Parliament approved the reports for the opinion drawn up by MEP Lídia Pereira (EPP, Portugal) on the proposals for a regulation and directive presented by the Commission in December 2018 to better combat VAT fraud in the e-commerce sector (see EUROPE 12158/29).
The report on the regulation on measures to strengthen administrative cooperation was adopted by 590 votes to 19 with 81 abstentions and the report on the directive on requirements for payment service providers was adopted by 591 votes to 18 with 86 abstentions, without modification compared to the texts adopted by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (see EUROPE 12369/11).
MEPs proposed several improvements to the texts to make information sharing more effective. They also recommend the establishment of a common system for the collection of comparable statistics on intra-Community VAT fraud and the publication of national estimates of VAT revenue losses due to fraud.
They also recommend the adoption of a mandate for the European Public Prosecutor's Office to ensure effective prosecution of fraudsters before national courts.
In particular, it proposes to extend the period during which payment service providers are required to keep information on cross-border payment transactions from 2 to 3 years, in order to help Member States to combat VAT fraud in e-commerce. The EU Council, which adopted its position on 8 November, also called for an extension of the deadline (see EUROPE 12366/4).
Finally, the Parliament recommends the use of blockchain technology to improve the online exchange of information between tax authorities (see EUROPE 12358/4), in particular by automatically linking cash registers and companies' sales systems to VAT returns. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)