Significant deviations of the Value Added Tax Law from the community VAT regulations

Abstract

On January 21, 2014, the Republic of Serbia officially initiated accession negotiations with the EU. The goal of the accession negotiations is that Serbia fully adopts the European acquis communautaire and ensures their full enforcement and implementation. The EU acquis communautaire cover the field of taxation, in which value added tax occupies a prominent place. Even though the Serbian VAT system is modelled after the European one, the Serbian legislator faces serious efforts in order to achieve complete harmonization with the European regulations in this domain. In its annual progress reports for Serbia in the past decade, the European Commission specified certain deviations. Their analysis is the subject of this paper. In the final part of the paper we provide the exact recommendations which should enable the Serbian legislator to successfully eliminate determined deviations from the European VAT law.

Keywords

• VAT
• the European Union
• accession
• harmonization of law
• Directive 2006/112/EC