At a meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council today, finance ministers adopted a draft EU directive on strenghtening mutual assistance between Member States in the recovery of taxes.
The directive aims at better fighting tax evasion by providing an overhaul of the EU’s directive 76/308 (codified by directive 2008/55), on the basis of which the member states have engaged in mutual assistance since 1976.
EU Member States have increasingly requested the assistance of other Member States to recover taxes after fraudsters have organised insolvencies in member states where they have debts. This results from the fact that national provisions on tax recovery are limited in scope to national territories.
The Councils draft directive aims at improving the assistance system between Member States by making rules easier to apply and by making information held by banks and other financial institutions easier to access. The directive is designed to provide more flexible conditions for requesting assistance and should make the exchange of information between Member States more spontaneous.
