Fighting Tax Avoidance and Tax Crimes in the European Union

Abstract

Since 2008 'fiscal leaks' have become an immediate policy challenge for EU governments, partly as a result of tax abuse. EU tax authorities transition to a new era in tackling tax abuse based upon policy innovation at the OECD, EU and national levels. There is a state of flux where much tax authority expertise regarding past regulations, systems and practices is now irrelevant and understanding has, instead, to focus upon the on-going change process. Identifying and tackling the tax gap to relieve inequality is the ultimate aim. The tax gap exists both domestically and internationally and ranges from criminal money laundering to sophisticated tax avoidance. In parallel expert networks in business, the tax profession, secrecy jurisdictions and the criminal economy develop the mechanisms undermining the expected effectiveness of tax systems in response to regulatory changes taking place. This creates the need for analysis, risk assessment and policy advice. These can include new tax gap analyses by state, tax risk maps identifying risk by jurisdiction, a new anatomy of money laundering risk, and tools to help tax authorities understand the risks that they face domestically and internationally. With the amount of regulations that are now undertaken in the field of taxation and money laundering, we can identify current times as a hot phase in policy making. This panel focuses on this current hot phase of regulations in taxation and money laundering in the EU.