The European Commission has paved the way for EU countries to speed up the exchange of information, following the introduction of several measures designed to crack down on sales tax frauds more quickly.
EC proposed the additional measures yesterday to fight carousel fraud, where high-value goods such as mobile phones are imported free of VAT from other EU countries and then sold with VAT charged, while the seller pockets the VAT refund.
'The measures being proposed…are the first step towards a more effective fight against VAT fraud',’ Laszlo Kovacs, EU tax and customs commissioner, said. 'Their advantages are that they can be implemented very quickly and do not impose any significant administrative burdens on economic operators.'
Under the current intra-community transaction system, it takes between three and six months to exchange information about the transaction. The new proposal reduces this period to between one and two months.
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