Ministers endorse EC paper on the future of VAT

EU ministers meeting in Brussels last week welcomed the European Commission’s paper on the future of VAT – Towards a simpler, more robust and efficient VAT system tailored to the single market – and declared their support for the objective of a system ’which should be simpler, more efficient and neutral, robust and fraud-proof’.

The Council of the European Union emphasised, in a press release following the meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council, that the current financial and economic situation was ‘difficult and complex’, and demanded a strong fiscal consolidation of national budgets.

But it acknowledged the need to simplify the system to reduce compliance costs and administrative burdens for both small and large businesses, and ‘in particular for businesses working in more than one Member State’.

The Council supported ‘work to ensure the timely implementation of the mini One Stop Shop in 2015 as a key priority action’. It noted that the EC favoured the restricted use of reduced VAT rates, and that it intended to launch this year an assessment of the current rates structure.