VAT Gap in the EU

The 2022 Study will meet new and significant challenges related to accurate and comparable measurement of the VAT Gap in EU Member States. One of these challenges relates to the structural changes in the economies and VAT systems in 2020 and 2021 resulting from the pandemic. Meeting of this challenge will require additional means to forecast relevant Supply and Use Tables (SUT) that are the core source of information about tax base. It will also require estimating other adjustments triggered by temporary measures introduced by Tax Authorities, like deferrals. Secondly, the 2022 Study will need to lay methodological foundations for the future studies that will not benefit from fiscal data that originating from, so called, Own Resource Submissions (ORS) that were discontinued in consequence of simplifications in procedures introduced by DG BUDG. Moreover, the Study will need to meet important and increasing needs for attractive estimates’ visualisation and shall take advantage of new modalities for presenting the figures.

The set of tasks, components of the analysis and elements of the presentation envisaged for 2022 Study, as set out in the ToR, consist of:

• Review of the economic and policy context in 2020 and outlook for 2021, which covers as a minimum: economic conditions, VAT regime changes, sources of changes in VAT revenue components.
• Specific research topic: Analysis of the impact of coronavirus pandemic on the VAT Gap.
• VAT Gap estimates by EU Member State as well as at EU level.
• Policy Gap estimates and collection efficiency by EU Member State as well as at EU level.
• Individual country reports.
• Econometric analysis of determinants of the VAT Gap: The report shall critically review and where applicable revise the regression approach, methodology used, and the choice of explanatory variables used in previous editions of the VAT gap study reports, significance tests and robustness checks.
• Specific research topic: Design and analysis of options in view of likely unavailability of weighted average rate calculations and data sources as of 2021 due to the amended legal framework.
• Web front end for visualisation and dissemination.

Sponsor: Directorate-General Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD)

Project leader: CASE– Center for Social and Economic Research