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Fighting tax evasion

June 12, 2013

The European Commission has said it wants to extend its previous plans to clamp down on tax evasion. It said more forms of revenues should be covered in an envisaged automatic information sharing scheme.

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Tax statement formular, euro banknotes and a calculator
Image: Fotolia/m.schuckart

The EU executive said Wednesday it planned to give member states even more information required to tax EU residents on all their financial activities in the bloc.

Member states are already moving towards automatically sharing details on employment revenues, company directors' fees, pensions, life insurance and real estate income, with the corresponding information system currently scheduled to be up and running by 2015.

Wednesday's proposal by the Commission extended the system to information on dividends, capital gains and all other forms of financial income and account balances.

EU-Gipfel gegen Steuerbetrug

Clamping down on tax evasion

"Member states will be better equipped to assess and collect the taxes that are due to be paid, while the EU will be well positioned to push for higher standards of tax-related good governance globally," EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta commented in Brussels.

EU governments are estimated to lose one trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) annually in taxes that go uncollected because of fraud. Semeta said that once implemented, the latest proposals would mean the EU "would have the most comprehensive information exchange system in the world for taxation."

The measures first need to be approved by the national governments and the European Parliament.

hg/msh (dpa, Reuters)