On 18 December, the Commission adopted a proposal to put in place a new decision-making process to create more certainty around certain VAT rules, leading to less red-tape and reducing costs of cross-border business for EU companies.
The VAT Committee consists of representatives of the Member States and of the Commission, and examines the application of EU VAT provisions raised by the Commission or a Member State.
But because it is an advisory committee, the VAT Committee can currently only agree non-binding guidelines on the application of the VAT Directive.
The new process proposed today would mean that certain VAT committee decisions would be taken under the so-called ‘comitology procedure’, allowing for the adoption of binding interpretations of certain concepts in the EU’s VAT rules. This will help provide legal and tax certainty for European businesses.
Today’s proposal forms part of the Commission’s Action Plan for fair and simple taxation supporting the recovery, a set of 25 initiatives to make taxation fairer, simpler and more adapted to modern technologies.
Source ec.europa.eu
