Merkx, Madeleine

English

Since 2015 the EU has availed itself of the option to shift the VAT liability on B2C supplies from suppliers to platforms through deeming provisions. On 1 July 2021 new deeming provisions for platforms came into effect. In such a full liability model the supplier is deemed to supply the goods or services in question to the platform and the platform is deemed to supply the goods or services to the consumer. Meanwhile, some EU Member States have also adopted joint and several liability for platforms.2 At first sight it seems efficient to shift the burden to collect VAT from numerous (small) suppliers to bigger market players: the platforms. Suppliers do not need to bother with charging the correct VAT amount to the customer and transmitting it to the tax authority, while tax authorities only need to enforce the VAT legislation on platforms. One may also argue that it is fair to shift the burden to platforms because they have more means to deal with VAT obligations and they have benefited from the rise of the digital and platform economy.In this contribution these premises will be addressed and it will be examined whether full liability models are indeed creating an efficient and fair collection of VAT on B2C supplies. In section 2 principles of efficient and fair collection of VAT will first be addressed. Section 3 subsequently discusses the concept of platforms, after which section 4 will describe the VAT rules under the full liability regime applying since 2015 and 2021. Section 5 will subsequently answer the main research question of this contribution: whether the rules discussed in section 4 are an efficient and fair model to collect VAT on B2C supplies considering the business models of platforms discussed in section 3. This section will also address the extension of the full liability regime to other supplies of goods or services, notably within the sharing economy. The provision of information collected on platform sellers and their transactions by platforms that is currently part of the VAT legislation as well (art. 242a VAT Directive3), and the DAC7 directive are beyond the scope of this contribution.

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Platform liability an efficient and fair collection model for VAT?

https://pure.eur.nl/files/65846129/Platform_liability_an_efficient_and_fair_collection_model_for_VAT_TC_JG_.pdf

Platform liability an efficient and fair collection model for VAT?

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