Report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on the application of Council Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 concerning administrative cooperation and combating fraud in the field of value added tax

According to Article 59 of Council Regulation No. 904/2010 on administrative cooperation in the field of VAT, the Commission must report by 1 November 2013 and thereafter every 5 years to the European Parliament and the Council on the application of this Regulation. This report is the first since the adoption and entry into force of Council Regulation No 904/2010. The latter is a recast of the former Council Regulation No 1798/2003 and offers Member States further tools for enhanced administrative cooperation to support the fight against VAT fraud.

The Recast Regulation was designed to improve considerably the legal framework governing administrative cooperation and act as an important tool in the fight against VAT fraud. In particular, the Regulation introduced some new arrangements relating to:
- The quality of the information contained in the databases;
- The setting-up of the Eurofisc network providing for multilateral, swift and targeted exhange of information relating to VAT fraud;
- The introduction of a feedback mechanism;
- Automated access to databases of other Member States.

The Commission would stress that the report should be seen as an opportunity to pool Member States' experience with the aim of improving the operation and use of those arrangements. (Article 49, Paragraph 1).

This report assesses the functioning of administrative cooperation within the current legal framework and focuses in particular both on an analysis of the extent to which previous recommendations have been taken into account to enhance administrative cooperation and on the use that is made of the newly-introduced arrangements in order to evaluate whether these changes have been effective. Furthermore, the report touches upon new ideas in the field of VAT administrative cooperation, such as joint audits.

Moreover, this report should not just be seen as an overview of the application of the regulation as such, but more importantly as a basis for a permanent and structured dialogue between the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council and the Member States in order to improve the efficiency of administrative cooperation in the field of VAT with the specific objective of fighting VAT fraud more effectively.

It should also be noted that the present report forms part of a wider package of documents on this subject.

EUR-Lex: COM(2014)71: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2014:071:FIN

ESO: Background information: Report from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament - Seventh report under Article 12 of Regulation (EEC, Euratom) No 1553/89 on VAT collection and control procedures http://www.europeansources.info/record/report-from-the-commission-to-the-council-and-the-european-parliament-seventh-report-under-article-12-of-regulation-eec-euratom-no-1553-89-on-vat-collection-and-control-procedures/

EUR-Lex: SWD(2014)39: Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2014:039:FIN

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