At their videoconference meeting on Tuesday 1 December, EU Finance Ministers were generally satisfied with the agreement reached in the Council of the European Union on the proposal (DAC 7) to amend the Directive (2011/16/EU) on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation (DAC) in order to extend the automatic exchange of information to digital platforms such as Uber and Airbnb (see EUROPE 12528/3).
German Minister Olaf Scholz told the meeting that this was one of the main priorities for the German Presidency of the Council of the EU. “With these new rules the EU makes an important step in addressing tax challenges arising from digitalisation of the economy”, he said.
At the video conference meeting of the Ecofin Council in November, he had urged his colleagues to reach unanimous agreement on this text quickly (see EUROPE 12595/4 ).
Agreement was finally reached at the technical level on 20 November (see EUROPE 12607/18), and was endorsed by the Member States’ Ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) on Friday 27 November.
According to the text, from 2023 onwards Member States’ tax authorities will automatically exchange information on income earned by sellers on digital platforms.
The text broadly maintains the substance of the Commission’s proposal, but adds certain provisions in order to avoid forcing the platforms to report twice. In particular, it allows agreements concluded with non-Member States on the exchange of information to be taken into account while also ensuring that reporting is carried out in a manner equivalent to that required in the DAC 7 Directive.
The Member States that took the floor during Tuesday’s round table welcomed “a strong and ambitious agreement”. France in particular stated that this was an important step forward and demonstrated that tackling tax evasion was not restricted to the digital giants.
Denmark, supported by Sweden, noted that there were other important aspects to tackling tax evasion and stressed the importance of revising the remit of the Code of Conduct Group (Business Taxation) in the Council of the EU so that all potentially harmful tax structures could be dealt with.
The European Commission is already preparing the next revision of the Directive (DAC 8), which will include crypto-assets and electronic currencies (see EUROPE 12608/29).
“We nearly have one new DAC every year”, said Pierre Gramegna, Finance Minister of Luxembourg. He went on to say that he was ready to discuss the next revision already.
As texts cannot be formally adopted by videoconference, the Council of the EU’s general approach will be adopted by written procedure in the next few weeks. The European Parliament has not yet delivered its opinion.
The text can be found at: https://bit.ly/3nW2wXt (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)