Strasbourg, 13/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the Piia-Nora Kauppi Report (Finnish, EPP) last week, the European Parliament approved the European Commission's proposals on: - a regulation concerning administrative co-operation in the field of value added tax; - the amendment to the directive on mutual assistance between the relevant authorities of the Member States in the field of direct and indirect taxation. The proposal aims in particular to allow for direct contacts between local and regional services participating in the fight against fraud (whereas the communication must for now pass through central liaison offices) and introduce an obligation to communicate, including information received from third countries. Parliament adopted (co-decision, first reading) a few amendments aimed at strengthening the Commission's proposal.
The report stresses that, according to Commission estimates, in the first half of 1998 Member States had discovered 250 cases of "carrousel"-type fraud representing over 500 million euro. This fraud consists in using Community rules for the acquisition of goods in one Member State, exempt of VAT, and selling these goods, applying local VAT, in another State. It is characterised by the delivery of invoices, whether or not accompanied by the goods, along a chain going beyond one or several borders, the fraud resting in the fact that one or several links in the chain not paying the tax authorities the VAT corresponding to the invoice, whereas other parts of the same chain recover the VAT on the basis of these invoices.