We’ve previously blogged on on the subject of the EU seeking to carve out a role in relation to tax. Now they’re focusing on advisers, including accountants, who facilitate tax evasion largely in the light of information revealed in the Panama Papers.
The commissioner for economic affairs, taxation and customs union said, ‘Complex financial schemes and opaque corporate structures do not happen by accident: some intermediaries have developed these into an art-form. These experts offer their clients the opportunity to aggressively exploit loopholes or to shift their profits to substantially reduce their tax bill. The public consultation we’re launching today will help us to work out ways to deter intermediaries from designing such schemes and to give our member states greater insight and information to enable them to put a stop to them.’
The EU Commission is concerned that certain intermediaries, including tax advisers and accountants are helping clients to shift profits for the purposes of avoiding tax. They accept that some complex transactions and the setting up of off-shore companies may be justifiable, it is clear that other activities are less legitimate and in some instances illegal.
Some steps have been taken to address corporate taxpayers operating cross border, but little has been done to introduce disincentives for those intermediaries that help, assist, or advise taxpayers in the design of structures to facilitate tax evasion or avoidance.
The consultation will examine whether it is appropriate to introduce binding rules at the EU level to deter tax advisers engaged in operations that facilitate tax evasion and tax avoidance and, if so, what the most suitable legal instrument should be.
In the UK, HMRC has already run a consultation on plans for new penalties for accountants and others who enable tax avoidance, which closed on 12 October, but has yet to publish details of how it will take proposals forward.
The EU public consultation will run until 16 February and you can view a copy of it here.
