Brussels, 27/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 14 November 2008, EU finance ministers will attempt to draft general guidelines on the package of legislation to tackle VAT fraud (value added tax) unveiled by the European Commission in March 2008 (see EUROPE 9624). At the most recent ECOFIN Council, the ministers did not have time to discuss the package because of the urgent need to address the financial crisis (see EUROPE 9757).
The aim of the European Commission's package of measures is to speed up the exchange of information on deliveries within the EU in order to tackle tax evasion more effectively. This would cover the exchange of information between economic operators registered for VAT and their VAT office, and between the national authorities in different member states. Such information exchanges can take between three and six months at present. At the end of last month, the French Presidency of the EU suggested the following compromise: economic operators should fill in VAT returns on a monthly basis; and member states would be able to allow VAT returns to be filled in on a quarterly basis for suppliers of goods and services of up to €50,000 a quarter (calculated on the basis of the four previous quarters).
The European Commission has postponed for a month the publication of three rafts of “conventional” measures to tackle VAT fraud, initially scheduled for the end of October, November and December 2008 (see EUROPE 9667). These measures will include the creation of EUROFISC, a decentralised VAT information and fraud exchange network (see EUROPE 9755); the drawing up of tighter rules on registering and de-registering from the VAT information exchange system (the “VIES” database); and the option of making economic operators failing to fill in their VAT returns properly legally liable for any tax losses generated in another member state. The Commission is planning to unveil changes to the VAT directive (2006/112/EC) before the end of the year in order to encourage the use of cross-border e-invoicing by relaxing the current measures requiring the use of electronic signatures, which are not very common in the European Union. (M.B./trans.fl)