According to a roadmap published on Friday 2 October and subject to public consultation until 29 October, the European Commission is expected, before the end of the year, to present a proposal for a directive to turn the VAT Committee into a comitology committee to empower the Commission to adopt implementing acts relating to value added tax.
At present, the Commission has no implementing powers with regard to the VAT Directive. The only tool at its disposal to promote consistent implementation of the rules is the VAT Committee, which is an advisory committee composed of representatives of the Member States and the Commission which can only agree on non-binding guidelines, which are often not put into practice.
In order to remedy the situation, the Commission intends to propose an amendment to the VAT Directive to grant itself powers to adopt implementing acts within a precise scope. In order to achieve its aim, the Commission intends to propose turning the VAT Committee into a comitology committee which will oversee the adoption of implementing acts by the Commission in relation to VAT by qualified majority voting.
“Conferring certain implementing powers on the Commission, subject to the control of that Committee, should contribute to a more uniform application of the EU VAT legislation to the benefit of taxable persons having economic activities in several Member States”, explains the Commission.
The use of comitology procedures would only be applied in connection with a “limited set of rules” implementing the provisions of the VAT Directive, for which a common interpretation is required, says the Commission. In the area of indirect taxation, comitology procedures are already used for administrative cooperation and excise duties.
Otherwise, the Council of the EU will retain its competence with regard to implementing rules and any changes to the VAT Directive will continue to require unanimous agreement in the Council of the EU.
The initiative had previously been announced in the July action plan to improve efforts to tackle tax evasion and simplify tax procedures (see EUROPE 12528/2).
The roadmap can be found at: https://bit.ly/2Gtsp0B (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)