DAC Recast proposal

Accountancy Europe strongly supports the European Commission’s proposed recast of the Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC), viewing it as an important step towards simplifying EU tax reporting requirements and reducing administrative burdens for businesses, tax advisers and tax authorities. The proposal addresses long-standing concerns about overlapping, duplicative and inconsistent reporting obligations across Member States.

Simplifying EU tax reporting requirements

Accountancy Europe particularly welcomes measures to prevent duplicative national reporting requirements, streamline DAC 4 and DAC 9 group reporting, simplify DAC 6 disclosure obligations, increase DAC 7 reporting thresholds and improve the exchange of tax information between tax authorities.

Further improvements to the Directive on Administrative Cooperation

At the same time, Accountancy Europe recommends further improvements to the proposals. Key recommendations include making taxpayers the primary reporters for DAC 6 cross-border arrangements, providing clearer and more consistent guidance on hallmarks across Member States, reducing reporting requirements for platform operators where the relevant information is already available through VAT systems, and further simplifying data requirements where taxpayer identification numbers have been verified.

Modernising EU tax cooperation and reducing compliance costs

Overall, the proposed recast represents a significant opportunity to modernise tax cooperation across the EU, lower compliance costs, improve legal certainty and enable businesses and tax administrations to allocate resources more effectively, while maintaining transparency and combating tax avoidance.

Read the full comment letter from Accountancy Europe to Mr. Gerassimos Thomas, Director General for Taxation and Customs Union at the European Commission →