Changes to the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC) consequently lead to amendments to
Regulation 904/2010 on administrative cooperation and combating fraud in the field of VAT.
These amendments will achieve the objective of the DRRs to facilitate access by the tax
authorities of the 27 EU Member States to information on cross-border transactions and the
automatic cross-checking of information on supplies and acquisitions. The new upgraded EU
VAT Information Exchange System (c) adapted to the specificities of the DRRs will be
designed, maintained, hosted and technically managed by the European Commission.
In his report, your rapporteur believes necessary to reinforce data protection both for the
safeguard of citizens’ privacy and for the safety of companies’ business secrecy, with data
storage within the companies themselves. The rapporteur fully supports the demands made by
the EPPO in its opinion 7/2023 of 3 March 2023 of the European Data Protection Supervisor,
concerning the package of legislative proposals on VAT in the digital age.
Your rapporteur insists on close cooperation between all actors involved in the fight against
VAT fraud, in particular EPPO, EUROFISC, EUROPOL and EUROJUST. They play a
central role on the protection of public money and on the fight against fraud. Therefore they
must have access to all sources of data enabling them to fulfil their mandate, in particular the
new upgraded VIES system.
Your rapporteur has been careful to ensure that this new system works in the real life of
businesses and tax administrations. In order to allow a reliable performance of real-time
checks of VAT numbers and achieve a fully effective central VIES, he requests the
Commission to improve the performance of the VIES VAT number validation functionality.
In the interests of simplification and limiting compliance costs for both businesses, in
particularly the SMEs, and tax administrations, your rapporteur requests the European
Commission to develop a secure and reliable software for connecting them to the national
administrations and the central VIES system.
In order to advance the digitalisation of the internal market and the simplification of the EU
VAT system, your rapporteur calls for the databases provided by the European Commission
(e.g. Access2markets) to be updated, to provide real-time information on EU VAT rates and
to respond in real time to tax enquiries. All this information should be easily accessible to
businesses.
Concerned about the respect of inter-institutional cooperation, your rapporteur stresses the
need for the draft-implementing act to be transmitted to the European Parliament for
information each time the European Commission wants to adopt an implementing act.
Finally, your rapporteur takes the vision that the implementation periods should be reassessed
and more time should be given to businesses and national administrations, to prepare and
coordinate the entry into force of DRRs, the VAT treatment of the platform economy or the
single VAT registration and IOSS update.
With regard to IOSS, the Rapporteur believes that the Commission should request a study by
independent experts to carry out a thorough an assessment of the advantages and
disadvantages of making IOSS mandatory.
Source: europarl.europa.eu
