JOINT AUDITS TO TACKLE VAT FRAUD: MORE THAN THE SUM OF 28 APPROACHES.

Member States (MS) in the European Union (EU) yearly lose billions of Euros on Value Added Tax (VAT) because the present VAT system within the EU is susceptible to fraud. In recent years, the EU, like other international organisations, presented numerous measures to realise a fundamental change in the global tax climate. Part of these measures focus on better cooperation between tax authorities. After all, aggressive tax planning, harmful tax practices and tax evasion thrive especially in a complex environment without cooperation. Better cooperation could be established by means of so-called joint audits, which go a step further than the current forms of cooperation between tax authorities. In this contribution, the added value of joint audits in preventing or combatting VAT-fraud will be discussed. Although there is still a long way to go, such an instrument - if applied as it is meant - could help to prevent and combat VAT-fraud and bring the EU supervision on VAT to the level where it is more than the sum of 28 national approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]