ECOFIN OF MAY 14th ON TAX EVASION AND TAX FRAUD

On may 14th, the 27 Ministers of Economy of the Member States of the European Union, were gathered in Brussels in the Ecofin Meeting.

On the agenda of the meeting, one point has been the fighting against tax evasion and tax fraud. On this point, the aim was the finding of an agreement with Switzerland, Monaco, Liechtestein Andorra and San Marino, on the rules about the exchange of tax informations. The goal was to amend the Directive on the taxation of the income of non residents. The idea was to make an examination of the changes to agreements which, as written by the European Commission "are necessary, taking into account international developments including cooperation in the field of fiscal and administrative assistance". Beside that, it has not yet been reached unanimity on the front of  authomatic exchange of information with an anti evasion intent.

At the time in fact there have been only a few expressions of interest  from Member States  for the accession to the Protocol initiated by France, Italy, Spain, Great Britain and Germany.

The Lithuanian Minister of Finance approved the conclusions of the Council on this point.

This is a graphic about collected corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP in 2011 in which are emerging also the numbers about Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.