To save money, the government intends to tighten controls. According to our information, these could target small resellers.

ANALYSIS

The government made its return Wednesday, with the first Council of Ministers of the school year. Now is the time for the reforms, and the closure of the 2020 budget, which must include the 5 billion tax cuts announced during the Great Debate. Among the avenues to achieve this is the fight against VAT fraud, especially with regard to e-commerce.

A tax collected as soon as the product arrives in Europe

When a consumer buys online sneakers in the United States, or a phone from Asia, the rule is that French VAT must be collected as soon as the product arrives in Europe, whether at the port of Hamburg, in Germany, or in Athens, Greece. But with the explosion of sales on the Internet, flaws have emerged in the system of collection and control of these levies.

According to our information, it is not necessarily the most "big" groups, such as Amazon or Fnac would be concerned: they have an electronic slip on their packages, which shows what is the product, its origin, its price and the amount VAT charged to the customer.

Hundreds of millions of euros lost

In addition to "smaller" resellers, fraud is not excluded. This is where the controls could be strengthened. And if it is difficult to estimate the amount of the shortfall, it could be a few hundred million euros.