As announced in its action plan to better combat tax evasion (see EUROPE 12528/2), the European Commission adopted, on Friday 18 December, a proposal for a directive aimed at transforming the VAT Committee into a comitology committee, to enable it to adopt implementing acts in the field of value added tax (see EUROPE 12574/8).
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 restricted 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.
According to the proposal, comitology would only be applied for a “limited set of rules” implementing the provisions of the VAT Directive for which a common interpretation is necessary. In particular, it considers that this should be the case for several provisions on taxable persons, taxable transactions, the chargeable event, liability for VAT or the taxable amount for VAT.
Otherwise, the EU Council will retain its competence with regard to implementing rules and any changes to the VAT Directive will continue to require unanimous agreement in the EU Council.
The text further specifies that any implementing measures concerning provisions on scope, rates or derogations clearly fall within the implementing powers of the EU Council, as they are particularly sensitive for Member States.
Finally, the Commission would only be empowered to adopt an implementing measure if the Committee gave a favourable opinion.
See the directive: https://bit.ly/3reWrrz (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)