The current VAT rules for financial and insurance services suffer a number of
shortcomings. They are complex, difficult to apply and have not kept pace with the
development of new services in the sector, leading to a lack of VAT neutrality as well
as legal uncertainty and high administrative and regulatory costs for businesses.
The Commission ran a public consultation between 8 February and 3 May 2021 with
the objective to gather the views of stakeholders and public authorities of the Member
States on the current VAT rules for financial and insurance services and their
functioning as well as on possible changes to these rules.
The consultation followed the combined evaluation roadmap and Inception Impact
Assessment published in October 2020 and is the first stage of the process intended
to modernise the EU VAT rules applicable to financial and insurance services.
The evidence gathered through this consultation should allow evaluating the current
rules on the one hand and shaping the options for review of the relevant provisions of
the VAT Directive on the other hand, both in view of a possible future legislative
proposal. This includes the collection of data confirming the main issues under the
current rules.
VAT rules for financial and insurance services are relevant for private and public sector
stakeholders alike. The public consultation was therefore addressed to a large diversity
of stakeholders: businesses, consultancies, representative organisations and public
authorities of Member States (such as tax authorities). Equally, contributions from
academics, researchers, non-governmental organisations and the general public were
welcome.
The consultation took the form of an online questionnaire. It did not aim at obtaining
responses statistically representative of the European population or of the economic
sector, thus the outcomes of the consultation cannot be extrapolated as scientifically
representing its views. Respondents were not required to answer all the questions. The
statistics computed in this summary are based only on contributions to the public
consultation submitted through the online questionnaire.
Source: europa.eu
