On 18 February 2020, the Council adopted a legislative package to collect payment data in order to combat e-commerce VAT fraud, estimated at around EUR 5 billion in 2015. It envisaged the creation of an EU-financed central database, called the Central Electronic System of Payment information (CESOP), where all the payment data collected will be stored and processed for the benefit of Member States. CESOP will go live on 1 January 2024.
After two years of fruitful cooperation with payment services providers and the Member States, the European Commission adopted on 6 April 2022 a Commission Implementing Regulation, which provides essential details for payment service providers on how to report the payment data in a harmonised format. The Regulation also lays down the main functionalities of CESOP as well as the tasks of the Commission and Member States regarding the management of the system, access to the data, security and personal data protection. CESOP is being built by the Commission upon the instructions of Member States and will only be accessed and operated by Eurofisc, the EU network of VAT fraud experts, to detect VAT fraud in the field of e-commerce.
More information on the new rules and CESOP is available here.
Source: europa.eu
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