Slovakia and the Czech Republic to promote 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 on the trade with meat, Finance Minister Peter Kažimír and his Czech counterpart Andrej Babiš agreed on Monday. By shifting the tax duty from suppliers to buyers, the finance ministers hope to prevent extensive tax fraud. Babiš pointed out that in VAT alone, €170 billion 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. We haven't seen much success on this front to date, but we'll surely want to keep on promoting this. I truly hope that we'll manage to persuade finance ministers and bureaucrats at the end of the day to give us these authorities", he stressed.