EU concerning mutual assistance for the recovery of claims relating to taxes, duties and other measures - Main contents

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dossier	COM(2020)813 - Operation of the arrangements established by Council Directive 2010/24/EU concerning mutual assistance for the recovery of ...
document	COM(2020)813
date	December 18, 2020

agreement – must respect tax debtors’ rights, in particular their right of defence.

4. Fourth action point: Developing the knowledge and awareness of the mutual recovery assistance rules

21.One of the conclusions of the Commission evaluation report COM(2017)778 related to the need to develop the knowledge and awareness of the mutual recovery assistance legislation. ⁶ It appears that problems in mutual recovery assistance often result from a lack of understanding of the rules under Directive 2010/24. Furthermore, raising awareness is necessary not only at the level of national tax authorities but also at the level of the taxpayers.

22.At EU level, some training events have already been organised. ⁷ The Commission is planning to organise more regular and systematic training within the framework of the Fiscalis program, in order to contribute to a common understanding and awareness of the possibilities for recovery assistance within the EU.

These training activities also have to pay attention to the growing impact of case law developments in the field of tax recovery and recovery assistance

23.Furthermore, each Member State is expected to share information about its national legislation and practice with other Member States. This information is important for tax authorities of other Member States that wish to check the possibilities for recovery assistance in other countries. Some national information is already available on the common database CIRCABC. The Commission will set up a coordinated action, inviting the Member States to proceed with an update and extension of this national information.

24.Member States will also be invited to raise the awareness of taxpayers about the possibilities and consequences of cross-border tax recovery assistance.

5. Fifth action point: Examining possibilities and ways to promote and facilitate recovery assistance with third countries

25.In 2018, the European Union signed its first bilateral agreement on administrative cooperation, combating tax fraud and recovery of claims in the field of VAT with a third country: the Kingdom of Norway. ⁸

The EU-Norway Agreement allows Member States and Norway to use the e-forms also for recovery assistance with regard to other taxes than VAT. ⁹ Several Member States have expressed their interest in using this possibility. This would be useful, in view of the automated translation of the standard forms ¹⁰ , which permit to inform the persons concerned in the official language of the requested State. ¹¹ Norway indicated that the evaluation of the extended use of the e-forms will be done by the end of 2020.

26.In its conclusions of 5 December 2019 ¹² , the Council of the European Union acknowledged that the EU–Norway Agreement was an important step in exchanging tax information with third countries. It stressed the importance of such cooperation between European Member States and third countries in the fight against tax fraud and invited the Commission to explore opportunities for new agreements on mutual assistance arrangements in VAT and recovery with other third countries.

Agreements on administrative cooperation with third countries, in particular to fight tax fraud related to e-commerce, are part of the initiatives outlined in the recently adopted Commission Action Plan for a fair and simple taxation supporting the recovery strategy. ¹³

27.Provisions on recovery assistance, maintaining the possibility to use the current framework for on-going recovery assistance with the United Kingdom, were included in the withdrawal agreement. ¹⁴

The Council of the European Union also authorised the European Commission to open negotiations for a new partnership with the United Kingdom. ¹⁵ The envisaged partnership covers, among other, administrative cooperation and mutual assistance in customs and value added tax (VAT) matters including for the exchange of information to fight customs and VAT fraud, and for mutual assistance for the recovery of claims related to taxes and duties, as mentioned in the negotiating directives ¹⁶ .

28.Since 2019, electronic recovery assistance request forms (in the Java format ¹⁷ ) are available for use with third countries. When these forms were initially developed, they were indeed designed in such a way that they can be used with other third countries.

A cooperation with third countries may also be envisaged for the revision of the current EU tax recovery assistance request forms.

29.Finally, the EU Recovery Expert Group has suggested to develop an EU model Memorandum of Understanding for bilateral agreements with third countries. Based on sharing best practices, this model could be used by Member States for organising their recovery assistance with third countries, in order to simplify the implementation of such agreements.

6. General conclusions and recommendations

30.The automated collection of statistical data will help to improve the accuracy of these statistics and to reduce the administrative burden for the Member States.

Member States are invited to effectively use the automated collection of statistical data and to include the additionally collected data in their annual reports to the Commission.

31.Although the recovered amounts are considerable, the problems reported show that there are concerns/doubts about the willingness or capacity of some Member States to provide recovery assistance. Member States have a legal obligation to assist other Member States in the recovery of tax claims so adequate measures need to be taken at national level to fulfil this requirement.

32.An appropriate follow-up should be given to every assistance request and the processing time should be substantially shortened. Member States should devote sufficient human resources, IT-infrastructure and IT-tools to tax recovery assistance, so as to fulfil their assistance obligations and to handle the ever-increasing volume of assistance requests. National rules and administrative practices need to be developed in such a way that tax recovery authorities can provide such assistance.

Member States are invited to organise an internal control, in order to ensure that requests for assistance are effectively executed and that the requested authorities provide clear and timely information to the applicant authorities about the execution of assistance requests.

Tax authorities are invited to report situations of non-respect of the recovery assistance rules to the appropriate level within the Member States and Member States are invited to submit these problems (at an earlier stage) to other Member States and to the Commission, so that persisting problems in the relations with other Member States can be dealt with in a more pro-active and effective way.

33.The EU tax recovery assistance framework faces several challenges: the tools and instruments to request and grant recovery assistance must be adapted to the increasing need for recovery assistance, the new economic and technological developments and the legal developments, in particular with regard to the respect of tax debtors’ rights.

34.The need to increase the knowledge and awareness of the EU tax recovery assistance framework is an important issue. Actions to increase this knowledge and awareness have been taken, but further action is needed.

35.Member States are invited to cooperate with the Commission to implement these actions, in a pro-active way and with a positive European spirit.

(1)

   Action 14 of this Action plan, https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/2020_tax_package_tax_action_plan_en.pdf .

(2)

   Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the operation of the arrangements established by Council Directive 2010/24/EU of 16 March 2010 concerning mutual assistance for the recovery of claims relating to taxes, duties and other measures.

(3)

   Directive 2010/24/EU of 16 March 2010 concerning mutual assistance for the recovery of claims relating to taxes, duties and other measures, OJ L 84/1 of 31 March 2010.

(4)

   Member States represented in Fiscalis Project Group 110: Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland.

(5)

   See Staff working document SWD(2017)461 of 18 December 2017 accompanying the Commission report COM(2017)778, No. 6.3.2.

(6)

   Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the operation of the arrangements established by Council Directive 2010/24/EU of 16 March 2010 concerning mutual assistance for the recovery of claims relating to taxes, duties and other measures.

(7)

   Fiscalis workshops on the use of the electronic forms for recovery under the central application (12-13 April 2018 and 19-20 April 2018) and a training workshop for Norwegian tax recovery authorities, following the adoption of the EU-Norway agreement on administrative cooperation and tax recovery assistance in the field of VAT (25-27 September 2018).

(8)

   OJ L 195/1 of 1 August 2018. This agreement entered into force on 1 September 2018.

(9)

   Article 40(4) of the agreement.

(10)

   Notably the uniform notification form and the uniform instrument permitting enforcement.

(11)

   The obligation to inform the person concerned in a particular language was confirmed by the case law of the EU Court of Justice (case C-233/08, Kyrian, and case C-34/17, Donnellan).

(12)

   Point 15 of the Council conclusions 14682/19 of 5 December 2019 on the report of the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report No 12/2019 “E-commerce: many of the challenges of collecting VAT and customs duties remain to be resolved”.

(13)

   Action 14 of this Action plan, https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/2020_tax_package_tax_action_plan_en.pdf

(14)

   Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, OJ C 384I , 12.11.2019, p. 1.

(15)

    https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/42737/st05870-en20.pdf

(16)

    https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/42736/st05870-ad01re03-en20.pdf

(17)

   With regard to the central application e-forms (eFCA), it was noted that this would require an IT-connection and support provided by the Commission and entail a financial contribution from participating countries, requiring an international agreement (as is the case with Norway).