Intra-Community
carousel VAT fraud occurs where a person liable for VAT who
has acquired goods or services within the Community on which
no VAT has been paid supplies these goods or services within
the Community with VAT imposed but then ‘disappears’
without paying the VAT into the Exchequer.
Faster
information exchanges
When
an intra-Community transaction takes place, it currently takes
between three and six months for information about that
transaction to be sent to the Member State in which the VAT is
due. Under the proposals for a Directive and a Regulation,
this period will be reduced to between one and two months,
thus enabling any fraud to be detected much faster.
With
this in mind, the Commission proposes:
*
harmonising and reducing to one month the period which persons
liable to VAT have for declaring intra-Community transactions
involving the supply of goods or services within the
Community;
* reducing from three months to one month the period for
transmission of this information between Member States;
* collecting information monthly on intra-Community purchases
of goods or services where the buyer or customer is liable for
VAT to make it easier to cross-check the data with that
provided by suppliers. For this purpose, buyers or customers
making transactions to a value of more than EUR 200 000 per
calendar year will be obliged to submit their VAT declarations
monthly. The threshold has been set at this level to avoid
imposing extra obligations on undertakings which make
intra-Community acquisitions only occasionally or only for
small amounts, while having regard to the significant amounts
which fraud represents;
* simplifying the procedures for submitting declarations on
intra-Community transactions in Member States in which these
procedures are abnormally complex to reduce the burden which
the procedures may impose on undertakings.
According to the various consultations carried out within the
private sector, these measures will not impose an additional
administrative burden on economic operators.
Other
conventional measures under discussion
In
addition to the proposals for a Directive and a Regulation,
the Commission recently submitted several other conventional
measures to the Member States’ tax authorities for
consideration and for a decision. Some of these measures do
not require any changes to EU legislation and can therefore be
implemented quickly by the national authorities.
With effect from 2009, the department which checks the data on
registration for VAT purposes on the Europa website will
enable confirmation to be obtained of the name and address of
trading partners established in other Member States and will
issue personal consultation certificates. This measure is
intended to increase the legal certainty of operators acting
in good faith and to enable the tax authorities to carry out
more effective controls.
Considerable progress has also been made in discussions with
the national authorities on the following points:
*
automated access by all other Member States to certain
non-sensitive data held by Member States on their own taxable
persons (business sector, certain data concerning turnover,
etc.),
* harmonisation of the procedures for the registration and
de-registration of persons liable for VAT to ensure the swift
detection and de-registration of fake taxable persons. The
Expert Group is considering the introduction of minimum
standards.
