Missing trader fraud

As a business or carousel carousel fraud (English missing trader intra- Community ( MTIC ) fraud ) is called a in the European Union ( EU) widespread form of tax fraud. Here, several ( fictitious) company interact in different EU Member States, one of the distributor up the supply the price paid by its customers does not pay sales tax to the tax office. The buyer, however, make the input tax and get this paid by the tax office. As in other parts of the chain delivery across internal borders is done and by country of destination principle, the VAT incurred not in the country of origin ( country of domicile of the seller ), but in the destination country ( country of domicile of the purchaser ), no adjustment shall be made with the preliminary or sales tax from other parts of the supply chain; also the detection more difficult.

Expiration

The carousel business works on ( at least) three steps:

The gain of the carousel ( and simultaneously the fiscal damage of the tax collector's office ) stems from the fact that U can ever repay the VAT from the tax office and the only sales tax debtor Z does not meet its payment obligations. In general, Z vanishes before the due date of the tax without a trace from the market and is therefore referred to as " missing trader " in English.

Once the goods have arrived back to the original seller S, the process anew begin. The goods are moved repeatedly in a circle across the borders. This rotating transaction principle has led to the name of VAT carousel. It assumes that all three parties cooperate. However, it may also be involved more intermediaries, who do not necessarily have to know about the fraud. In order to achieve the highest possible yield, physically small, but quite high-priced goods are used (eg mobile phones or computer chips ) usually. A carousel services business is conceivable, but far more complex to perform than with goods deliveries. One reason for this is that so far the destination principle for cross-border services in the EU principle does not apply.

This type of fraud go to the treasury, according to official estimates annually several billion euros of taxpayers' money lost.

Countermeasures

In the United Kingdom, which was severely affected in the past by carousel fraud, the end of 2006 the deduction for certain goods was (eg mobile phones ) suspended and the so-called reverse charge procedure. Then, the cross-border trade was extremely back with mobile phones.

On July 1, 2011, also in Germany for certain goods (mobile phones, individual chips, ie even processors) exposed to the deduction and introduced the reverse charge procedure (acquisition tax ). However, a threshold of 5000, applies - EUR; only when this limit is exceeded for a coherent business that reverse charge procedure ( § 13b para 2 No. 10 UStG) applies.

Since October 1, 2013 must be proven by the Gelangensbestätigung or other alternative documents that exempt intra- Community supplies of companies have actually arrived in the scope of the German VAT law in other EU countries.

Similar measures have also been used to prevent fraud in the EU emissions trading scheme ( refer fraud by carousels ).