Closing evasion loopholes

As European Union member states search for a comprehensive withholding tax solution to combat tax evasion, the Council of Ministers has reformed how national tax authorities cooperate to fight fraud. The updated Mutual Assistance Directive will allow them to conduct simultaneous control checks on taxpayers operating in several countries of the EU and share the information obtained. It also insists that requests for information from another country’s tax agency should be treated as a local inquiry, dispensing with additional bureaucracy and says that tax agencies should work for each other, for instance by serving ex-patriot taxpayers with amended assessments.