In their drive to increasingly regulate the crypto-assets market (see EUROPE 12924/19), MEPs discussed, on Monday 25 April in the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Tax Matters (FISC), the tax impact of this new technology. MEP Lídia Pereira (EPP, Portugal) presented her report, which is based on three pillars: - how best to use these technologies to combat money laundering; - how to ensure that crypto-assets can be taxed fairly without hindering their development; - how to ensure that these new technologies can help citizens and taxpayers in order to give them new investment opportunities.
“We need reforms to adapt to the new challenges; new financial technologies are not a phenomenon of circumstance, they are a window, an opening, an opportunity to be seized so that our companies have more financial liquidity”, explained Ms Pereira. In fact, in 2021, 17% of Europeans showed interest in this financial innovation and 40% of them decided to invest.
In order to “anticipate and move towards tomorrow’s developments” and that “Europe keeps up with history”, the rapporteur called for “modern and intelligent legislation” to ensure that Europe “does not miss the boat”, particularly in relation to Asia.
The shadow rapporteurs underlined the quality of Ms Pereira’s report. For Aurore Lalucq (S&D, France), “this is a very good basis for discussion”. The issue of the tax base, she said, will be paramount, as will the role of the different tax administrations and their cooperation. She liked the idea of using blockchain for anti-money laundering.
Martin Hlaváček (Renew Europe, Czech Republic), on the other hand, expressed his desire to address three elements in the upcoming discussions: data privacy, security and administrative cooperation or ‘DAC8’.
In her report, Ms Pereira calls on the Commission to encourage the assessment of different national policies to combat tax evasion and fraud in the field of crypto-assets and to create a new platform for training and sharing best practices in the fight against tax evasion and fraud between national tax authorities.
MEPs can table amendments until Wednesday 11 May. These will then be discussed on Thursday 16 June, before a vote in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) on Thursday 30 June.
To read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/1dh (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)