VAT Directive to change to end carousel fraud

The European Commission wants to amend the VAT Directive to help eradicate a kind of international VAT fraud that is estimated to have cost the UK exchequer up to £2 billion a year. Carousel fraud is a form of what is known as Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud, though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. …

[TeeCee]

"....only.......five goods:"

Wow, that's just sooo clever! Is there anyone out there who *doesn't* think that this is the start of an enormously expensive game of whack-a-mole as the crooks just swap to trading things wot aren't included?

[Anonymous Coward]

It maybe so

but the figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt, if the govt can only estimate between 1.2 and 1.9 Bn that leaves a leeway of around (estimated) 40% inaccuracy. Pretty much how the whole economy has been run to date and not in our favor that's for sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like a mess

So it applies to some goods, some of the time, in some countries? Good grief!

Why not simply make sales from one VAT registered UK company to another VAT registered UK company tax free? No vat is charged, and no vat is reclaimed, unless the goods are sold to end customers.

That simplifies the whole thing, it would then be the same for a company selling UK to UK or UK to EU.

[Sly]

@That sounds like a mess

That would be too easy... it would also cut out all the VAT collected through those individual transactions and reduce the gov's take.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simpler solution

Scrap VAT. It's a deeply unfair tax and should never have been introduced in the first place.

[G R Goslin]

Wow

This has to be the best. You import something that does not exist (greenhouse gas emission allowances). You sell this non-existent item, with VAT included, then follow the goods into a state of non-existence. Can there really be an easier way to trouser vast amounts of money.

[John 61]

Don't forget...

VAT goes back up in January. :( That should help kill the January sales...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Reg: wrong use of term "export"?

"In a carousel fraud, goods that have been imported into one Member State are sold through a series of transactions before being exported again to another EU Member State."

I am not a VAT / accounting professional, but I think your use of the term "Export" in the article for intra EU Member States trading is wrong. Export only occurs when goods are exported out of EU (to any non-member Country) and likewise import only occurs when they are first imported from a non-member Country into any of the Member States. All transactions between EU Member States are just that - transactions & trading, not import / export.

At least this is how things were here on the continent the last time I checked...

[Sam Radford]

Grammur!

"The Commission put temporary 'reverse charge' measures in place at the end of last year but said that its changes to the VAT Directive were different to earlier proposed pilot schemes."

Here I am, doing your proof-reading again! ;-)

For the uneducated: in English we say "different from", avoiding American affectations such a "different to", "different than" or "different of".