Only fair EU solidarity and appropriate VAT harmonization can effectively fight the tax avoidance and evasion

This research, carried out on empirical evidence in the framework of the PhD in Private Autonomy Business, Work and Protection of Rights in European and International Perspective, at the Department of Legal Sciences, University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy), aims to analyse the status quo of the tools offered by the EU fiscal collaboration, and to analyse the fight against illegal phenomena in the e-commerce, focusing on VAT, in order to propose recommendations, divided by type and recipient1 (summarized in Annex 1), to fight the tax avoidance and evasion also by pursuing the VAT harmonization. Particular attention was paid to the current fiscal challenges generated by the Digital Economy, to which the EU legislators responded, in the VAT field, by launching the e-commerce package and, in the field of collaboration, by introducing new obligations of communication. The current tools offered by tax cooperation, and the special VAT regime of the One Stop Shop are reviewed, the latter representing the most advanced field, with an objective vision that, through the Reports carried out by the European Court of Auditors and the European Commission, like the gaps in the exchange of tax data in the EU may encourage tax avoidance and evasion and come the e-commerce still vulnerable to VAT and customs duty evasion. What is most worrying is the current, ascertained little application in this regard by the Member States, also in view of the evident will of the European Union and of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, to extend the automated exchanges to new kinds of information (e.g. DAC 7 and 8, the data base CESOP and the EU e-invoicing), and to apply the One Stop Shop also to intra-community B2B operations. The final solution, although it must forcibly pass through some necessary intuitions both in the operational and regulatory fields, cannot but be primarily a cultural, political and social one, that forces the conscience of the individual EU countries to think and work as one, leaving aside autonomist approaches2 and, at times, sacrificing their own interests to pursue the good of the others, arriving perhaps one day at a European "Federation".