The EU Council adopts new VAT rules for e-commerce and small businesses

The Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the European Union (ECOFIN) has adopted new rules to facilitate the detection of VAT fraud in cross-border e-commerce and simplified the VAT rules for small businesses; the new legislation will come into force in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

The new rules for the exchange of VAT payment data in e-commerce will allow Member States to collect electronic data from payment service providers in a harmonized way, as well as a new central electronic system for storing payment information. This will also be available to Member States’ anti-fraud officials. The new measures will come into force from 1 January 2024. (MTI)