Study and Reports on the VAT Gap in the EU-28 Member States

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.

The study aims to provide further information regarding the uptake and economic consequences of introducing wealth-related taxes. The purpose of the study is to shed further light firstly into recurrent wealth related taxes by (i) reviewing the conditions for the implementation of a net wealth tax and its consequences, to provide a detailed literature review on recurrent capital taxes in the EU and analyse their economic consequences; and secondly (ii) to provide an overview of existing non-recurrent wealth related taxes, namely, by providing an overview of capital taxes, inheritance and gift taxes and the existing exit tax provisions in the field of personal income taxation (including relevant statutory references), and how these interrelate with and complement the legal framework of taxing net wealth and capital gains. The study builds on previous research work mapping wealth taxes and estimating the consequences of their introduction. It is structured along two parts comprised of two and three workstreams respectively, related to the topics outlined above. Part 1 – Recurrent taxation, Workstream 1 – Net wealth taxes Part 1 – Recurrent taxation, Workstream 2 – Capital taxes Part 2 – Non-recurrent taxation, Workstream 3 – Capital taxes Part 2 – Non-recurrent taxation, Workstream 4 – Inheritance and gift taxes Part 2 – Non-recurrent taxation, Workstream 5 – Exit taxes

This study shall provide input for the Impact assessment for a possible legislative proposal for the revision of the VAT exemption as laid down in the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC (1) and a possible legislative proposal for an EU taxation framework for the financial sector (2). The main purpose of this study is to provide an informed analysis of the potential problems arising from the current tax framework applicable to the financial sector in the EU (various sector-specific taxes and the VAT exemption) based on the analysis of the information already available and on the collection of relevant and more up-to-date evidence taking into account the current economic context, notably structural changes that are likely to persist over time, and specific features of the financial sector, notably, its regulatory and supervisory framework. On the basis of this analysis, the objective of the study is to provide insights supporting the potential development of options for an adequate EU taxation framework for the financial sector, which could include amending the current VAT Directive and establishing an EU taxation framework for the financial sector.