The EU Commission is considering the proposal for a Council Directive amending Directive 2011/16/EU as regards measures to strengthen existing rules and expand the exchange of information framework in the field of taxation to include crypto-assets and e-money.
This proposal is part of the action plan and aims at improving cooperation between national tax authorities in newly developing areas as well as on existing matters. This initiative should provide tax administrations with information to identify taxpayers who are active in new means of exchange, notably crypto-assets and e-money. It will also ensure consistency with ongoing work at EU level, such as the Digital Finance Strategy adopted on 24 September 2020 and the proposal for a Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets, and at international level on the taxation on crypto-assets and e-money. In addition, it will include concrete improvements and updates to keep the framework in line with national and international developments.
The main problems that the initiative aims to tackle are twofold: (i) the lack of information at the level of national tax administrations about the emergent use of crypto-assets and e-money, possibly resulting in revenue losses also for the EU budget; (ii) the disparity in the sanctions applied based on the current provisions and other necessary punctual adjustments/improvements to be made to the Directive.
The general objectives of the initiative are to ensure the proper functioning of the Internal Market, reduce tax evasion and other forms of tax abuses, simplify compliance and increase the confidence of European citizens in the fairness of the tax system while ensuring fair competition in the Internal market.
The specific objectives of the initiative are to enable tax administrations to obtain information that is necessary to control that taxpayers pay their fair share, in particular taxpayers who earn money via crypto- assets, as well as to provide for better cooperation across tax administrations and keep business compliance costs to a minimum by providing a common EU reporting standard.
The impact assessment will consider what data should be collected and exchanged among national tax administrations and the impact of different policy options. The aim is to collect only the data necessary to perform the risk analysis and facilitate tax control of the crypto-assets and e-money.
The Commission will consider whether guidelines (soft-law) addressed to Member States tax administrations and crypto-assets and e-money operators may eventually achieve the objectives. Otherwise, it will be considered whether an amendment of Council Directive 2011/16 could be necessary in order to:
Include relevant data from crypto-assets and e-money under the provisions for mandatory automatic exchange of information between Member States. The specifics of the amendment may vary depending on different operational technical arrangements for the transmission and exchange of data and the regulatory burden, costs, benefits and savings related to it.
Strengthen provisions for administrative cooperation.
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