VAT gap in Europe – report 2025
The study's primary objective is to collect and supply economic information from existing official economic and statistical databases, as well as to gather primary data from national authorities. The study will also conduct macroeconomic analysis for country-specific VAT compliance and policy gap estimations and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, the study will include up to five case studies on specific countries and/or topics, to be proposed by the contractor in their technical offer. Geographically, the study will cover all EU Member States, subject to quality checks for data reliability and robustness. This includes coverage of the United Kingdom during its time as an EU Member State. In addition, the study will test and implement, where possible, the inclusion of EU candidate countries and possible candidate countries, except for Türkiye. These countries include: • Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia1 (candidate countries at the stage of accession negotiations); • Ukraine, Moldova, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Candidate countries for which the Council has decided to open accession negotiations); • Georgia (candidate country); • Kosovo (potential candidate country). The study's temporal scope will cover primarily a 6-year period, comprising: • a comprehensive review and revision of ‘full estimates’ for the first four years, i.e., for 2019-2022; • a new ‘full estimate’ for the fifth year, i.e., for 2023; • provisional ‘fast estimates’ for the sixth year based on simplified methodology for 2024. In addition to the 6-year coverage, the study will provide a historical context by reporting on VAT compliance gaps from 2000 onwards, and VAT policy gap estimates, including its components, from 2016 onwards. This will provide a comprehensive timeline of these indicators. The study will also include a review of the economic and policy context, also including an outlook beyond this 6-year period.
