Action Plan on VAT: Creating a single VAT area in the EU

Abstract

The current Value Added Tax system was developed in a transitory and fragmented manner, and it is not able to follow the continuous changes in the global economy, neither in the digital era. Everybody agreed that the tax system needed an urgent reform. On April 2016, the European Commission adopted its Action Plan on Value Added Tax (VAT). The Action Plan on VAT includes proposals to modify the current common system of this tax, and to create a single tax area in the European Union. Besides to modernize and simplify the tax system, other main objectives are to decrease fraud, to reduce tax gap between Member States, to remove the obstacles for eCommerce, and to simplify workloads for taxpayers, especially for small and medium enterprises. Small and medium enterprises have bigger workloads and costs than large enterprises when they comply with the fragmented and complex current tax system, decreasing their results in competitiveness and innovation. The Action Plan proposes to standardize declarations and a more efficient tax regulation for these enterprises, to encourage their growth and the cross-border trade. The time has come to create a real single VAT area in the European Union and, for that reason, the tax needs to evolve and being renewed, and the Action Plan will be the path.