Regulation 2020/283 - Amendment of Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 as regards measures to strengthen administrative cooperation in order to combat VAT fraud - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 62/1

Council Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 (3) lays down rules, inter alia, on the storage and exchange through electronic means of specific information in the field of value added tax (VAT).

The growth of electronic commerce (‘e-commerce’) facilitates the cross-border sale of goods and services to final consumers in Member States. In that context, cross-border e-commerce refers to supplies upon which the VAT is due in a Member State, but the supplier is established in another Member State, in a third territory or in a third country. However, fraudulent businesses, established either in a Member State, in a third territory or in a third country, exploit e-commerce opportunities in order to gain unfair market advantages by evading their VAT obligations. Where the principle of taxation at destination applies, since consumers have no accounting obligations, the Member States of consumption need appropriate tools to detect and control such fraudulent businesses. It is important to combat cross-border VAT fraud caused by the fraudulent behaviour of some businesses in the area of cross-border e-commerce.

To date, cooperation between the tax authorities of the Member States (the ‘tax authorities’) to combat VAT fraud has been usually based on records held by the businesses which are directly involved in the taxable transaction. In cross-border business-to-consumer supplies, which are typical within the field of e-commerce, it is possible that such information is not directly available. Thus new tools are necessary to enable tax authorities to combat VAT fraud in an effective way.

For the vast majority of cross-border online purchases made by consumers in the Union, payments are executed through payment service providers. In order to provide payment services, a payment service provider holds specific information to identify the recipient, or payee, of the cross-border payment together with details of the date, the amount and the Member State of origin of the payment. Such information is necessary for tax authorities to carry out their basic tasks of detecting fraudulent businesses and determining VAT liabilities in relation to cross-border business-to-consumer’ supplies. It is therefore necessary and proportionate that the VAT-relevant information, held by payment service providers, is made available to the Member States and that the Member States can store it in their national electronic systems and transmit it to a central electronic system of payment information in order to detect and combat cross-border VAT fraud, particularly as regards business-to-consumer’ supplies.

Giving Member States the tools to collect, store and transmit the information provided by payment service providers and giving Eurofisc liaison officials access to that information when it is connected to an investigation into suspected VAT fraud or in order to detect VAT fraud is a necessary and proportionate measure to combat effectively VAT fraud. Those tools are essential as tax authorities need that information for VAT control purposes, to protect public revenues as...