The shaping of the tax audits regime in the new common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) legislation: Proposed solutions for substantives and procedural provisions

Abstract

The European Commission has been pursuing, since 2001, the project to introduce a common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB) as a systematic solution to overcome the tax obstacles to cross-border business activity in the EC internal market, and, after some years of consultations and technical work on the shape of this new corporate tax regime, a Directive introducing the CCCTB seems finally bound to come out in the near future. This would be the most far-reaching piece of EC tax legislation ever introduced, and one of the key aspects of its working concerns the shaping of the tax audits regime for eligible businesses. Numerous and key questions are being raised by the shaping of this regime (e.g.: which tax authoriy can conduct the audit ? How can tax authorities of Member States concerned collaborate with each others ? Should there be particular criteria for selecting the businesses to be subject to tax audits ?): this paper (which was first submitted for an international conference on the CCCTB co-organised on 21-23 February 2008 by the Austrian and International Tax Law Institute of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and by the European Commission, and subsequently approved for publication as a book chapter) aims at proposing responses to these questions and to further issues, and at identifying possible solutions which may reconcile the attractiveness of the new regime from the viewpoint of businesses with the need to prevent distortions in the functioning of the EC internal market. The book which includes the paper - Lang/Pistone/Schuch/Staringer (ed.) Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), 2008, Linde Publishing House (Vienna) - is forthcoming.