Slovakia, Czech Republic seek self-taxation on meat

Slovakia and the Czech Republic intend to turn together to the European Commission with a request to enable the introduction of a self-taxation system regarding the payment of VAT tax on the trade of meat and other commodities, confirmed Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir and his Czech counterpart Andrej Babis after their meeting here on Monday.

"We'll join forces in an effort to extend the list of commodities wherein VAT tax evasions could be prevented in a systematic fashion. We have identified meat as such commodity, where we're talking tax evasions worth dozens of millions of euros," explained Kazimir.

He added that the list should be expanded also to include other items, such as telecommunications services, trade with rapeseed oil and marketing and advertizement services.

Babis pointed out that in VAT alone, 170 billion euros (184 billion U.S. Dollars) is lost annually in the EU due to tax evasion.

"We've come up with a proposal to give governments reverse charge powers and want Brussels to bestow this authority upon us, so that we won't have to consult Brussels on everything because we know how to effectively combat tax fraud," stressed Babis.

Kazimir is convinced that Slovakia and the Czech Republic could become the driving force behind the mutual cooperation of tax and customs authorities in central Europe in the following years. Endit