The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) will vote on the own-initiative report by Michalis Hadjipantela (EPP, Cypriot) regarding the simplification and harmonisation of tax legislation on Tuesday 15 July. According to the compromise amendments, as seen by Agence Europe, the ECON Committee should call for the streamlining of tax procedures to increase the EU’s competitiveness (see EUROPE 13667/27).
From the outset, the draft report should emphasise that, in addition to harmonisation efforts, “a lot of progress can be achieved in simplifying tax compliance and eliminating administrative hurdles in the internal market”. The text gives examples of common implementation tools, such as standardised templates for data gathering and reporting, guidance from the Commission, dialogue and exchange of best practices between Member States.
With regard to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), MEPs should highlight the fact that they face high administrative burdens and compliance costs due to complex tax regulations and fragmented tax systems. They should therefore urge the European Commission to assess the impact on SMEs of current and future proposals and to explore solutions. The text refers to the ‘HOT’ directive aimed at simplifying the taxation of SMEs, which was not adopted by the Council of the EU (see EUROPE 13389/19).
On the other hand, MEPs should call on the European Commission and Member States to “agree on a coordinated approach to enhance transparency of tax expenditure of governments to ensure that it is producing the desired policy goals”, with the aim of tackling tax evasion and optimisation.
They should also call for the establishment of an EU Tax Data Hub to improve the automatic exchange of tax information and reduce administrative burdens. They should also invite the European Commission to issue recommendations in favour of a simplified and competitive tax system, which the EU Council also requested in March (see EUROPE 13597/11).
Finally, MEPs should focus on value added tax (VAT) and call for reforms in this area to reduce the VAT compliance gap, which varies considerably from one Member State to another.
Read the draft compromise amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/hvc (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)