Fighting VAT Fraud through Administrative Tools in the European Union

Abstract

Tax evasion is a phenomenon inherent in the existence of tax systems, which transcends both borders and the level of development of countries. Value added tax (VAT) is an increasingly important source of revenue for the European Union (EU) Member States. Still, like every other tax, VAT is vulnerable to frauds. Because the most damaging VAT fraud schemes take place in more than one Member State, EU-level cooperation is a necessity. The aim of this article is to analyze the steps made by the European Union to combat and prevent VAT fraud using the administrative cooperation between Member States. In the first part of the paper we presented the VAT Criticism and the proportions of VAT fraud in the EU. Second part of the paper analyses the administrative cooperation tools used by Member States in order to tackle VAT fraud, such as: SCAC (Standing Committee on Administrative Cooperation), VIES (VAT Information Exchange System), Eurofisc and TNA (Transactional Network Analysis). Also, we looked into other EU Bodies, Committees and Programmes like Europol, Eurojust and Fiscalis which support and complement the efforts of member States in the fight against VAT fraud. In the third part, there are the conclusions for this work.

Keywords

• tax evasion
• vat fraud
• vat gap
• cooperation tools
• vies