Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context

214. To ask the Minister for Finance the exact nature and current status with regard to the European Commission’s announcement of 24 January 2024 that it was sending Ireland a formal notice for failing to transpose Directive (EU) 2020/284 introducing certain requirements for payment service providers (INFR(2024)0070); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17926/24]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

This issue arose after amendments were agreed to the VAT Directive in February 2020 to create a new record keeping obligation for payment service providers established in the EU. The purpose of the new requirements is to allow Member States to collect payment data from payment service providers to assist tax administrations in tackling cross-border VAT fraud associated with eCommerce. Two separate Council Regulations (Council Regulation (EU) 2020/283 and Council Regulation (EU) 2020/284) set out the requirements for the retention and transmission of these records.

The deadline for the transposition of this amendment to the VAT Directive was 31 December 2023. Work on the transposition was completed by Revenue in December 2023 with the transposition being finalised on 20 December 2023 when the Minister signed two statutory instruments, “European Union (Value-Added Tax) Regulations 2023” and “European Union (Value-Added Tax) (No. 2) Regulations 2023.”

The infringement arose from an error in the notification that was sent to the Commission via the THEMIS system which did not include a correlation table and which included the word ‘draft’ in the uploaded documents. The corrected regulations and the correlation table were uploaded on 19 February. Following a clarification from the Commission that the explanatory letter provided by the Department should also be uploaded to the THEMIS system this upload was completed on 29 February.