Brussels, 11/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 17 March, the European Commission will adopt a proposal for a directive aimed at speeding up the collection and exchange of information on intra-Community transactions on goods and services in order to fight VAT (value added tax) fraud more effectively. Announced by Commissioner Laszlo Kovacs during the March Ecofin Council (see EUROPE 9615), these measures will above all suggest that the time between recapitulative statements on intra-Community transactions as well as the maximum time for exchanging information between national tax administrations be reduced to one month. Once unanimously adopted by the Council, these measures would take effect on 1 January 2010. The Commission will continue its work on other standard measures such as improved updating of national VAT registers.
At the present time, the time between the moment when an operation takes place and that when the information is made available to the member state of acquisition is between three and six months. According to the proposal envisaged, this could be brought down to between one and two months. So as not to place an undue administrative burden on companies, the Commission hopes to target the measures on a small number of companies liable to tax. In its view, only 4% of these companies submit recapitulative statements and 9% carry out intra-Community acquisitions of goods. It goes on to state that the additional cost of the future measures will be restricted in so far as the future directive will also contain a provision simplifying procedures for submitting recapitulative statements.
In order to combat fraud, information on intra-Community acquisitions of goods and services from a supplier established in another member state should be collected each month. Only companies carrying out deals of a cumulated value of €200,000 per year would be under an obligation to submit a monthly VAT declaration. Furthermore, the future proposal for a directive will seek to harmonise VAT requirement rules on services in order to ensure that operations are declared during the same period by both seller and buyer. This provision will allow the tax administrations to carry out a cross-check of information forwarded to them. (M.B.)