Marie Lamensch

Are ‘reverse charging’ and the ‘one-stop-scheme’ efficient ways to collect VAT on digital supplies?

With regard to the collection of VAT on electronically supplied services, the EU VAT Directive provides for reverse charging (in B2B) and a single registration scheme (in B2C). This paper challenges the efficiency of these collection mechanisms in a digital context, and in particular their practicability for suppliers (acting as tax collectors). It also discusses whether they are in compliance with the 1998 OECD recommendations on e-commerce. After noting the current (non-)developments in the context of the European Commissions ambition to reform the EU VAT system and achieve a Digital Single Market by 2020, it sketches three proposals for further discussion.

Soft law and EU VAT: From informal to inclusive governance?

Soft law has for decades played a role in the largely non-harmonized area of EU direct taxation. It more recently appeared in the harmonised area of EU VAT, with the emergence of the VAT Committee guidelines (published since 2012), the adoption of “explanatory notes” by the Commission (for the first time in 2014), and the opinions of the VAT Expert Group (since 2014). Beyond the EU borders, International VAT/GST guidelines are now also being developed under the auspices of the OECD, substantial parts of which have been endorsed by more than 100 states in 2014 and 2015. The objective of this paper is to analyse and assess these four instruments, and to open a discussion on the negative and positive uses that can be made of soft law in an EU harmonised area. The conclusion that we draw from this assessment is that the VAT Committee guidelines and the Commission explanatory notes open the way to “informal governance” in the area of VAT (considered as rather negative) while the VAT Expert Group opinions open the way to an “inclusive” type of governance in this field (considered as very positive).

Different VAT rates for digital and paperback publications in the EU, a breach of ‘fiscal neutrality’? A tentative answer and broader reflection on the coherence of the EU rules prohibiting indirect tax discrimination

Should we apply the same VAT rates to digital and paperback publications for the sake of fiscal neutrality? The debate has been raging on for some time but the question has not yet been analysed in detail, nor in the literature, nor even by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent decisions concerning the application by France and Luxembourg of reduced rates for e-books. This is the objective of this paper, and also the occasion to suggest a new perspective on the scope and objective of the case-law based VAT ‘principle of fiscal neutrality’.