Taxation: Darmanin wants a "black list" of bad student platforms

Paris (AFP)

Minister of Public Accounts Gerald Darmanin said Thursday that Bercy was going to establish a "blacklist" of online platforms that do not play the game with the French tax authorities, in an interview with Les Echos.

"We will establish a blacklist of non-collaborative platforms, as for tax havens, according to four criteria: pay Gafa tax if the company is liable, pay VAT, respond to the tax administration if requested and transmit user revenues, "said Darmanin.

"This is good news for the French platforms which, they, respect the rules," said the minister, recalling that its services will "transpose in the draft finance law a European directive that imposes on online platforms as Amazon or Alibaba to collect VAT ".

"It must be remembered that the most massive fraud is VAT: it is 80% of criminal cases," said Darmanin.

"There will obviously be sanctions for those who do not collect VAT," he said.

"In the longer term, we plan to generalize electronic invoicing, including for SMEs, so as to detect fraud earlier", as in Italy, he added.

"We are firm in the fight against tax fraud, but we will give companies time to adapt to these new requirements", while a real tax intelligence service will be set up in Bercy, added Mr. Darmanin.

The Minister of Public Accounts said in June that he expected to recover between 1 and 2 billion euros by the fight against VAT fraud by the end of the five-year period. In Les Echos, he estimated that "several hundreds of millions, even several billion, can be recovered".

The European Commission has estimated the amount of VAT fraud at EU level at EUR 147 billion a year, including around EUR 20 billion in lost tax revenue for France - about 12% of EU VAT receipts. a tax which represents nearly half of the tax revenues of the French State.

Mr. Darmanin further confirmed, as promised by President Emmanuel Macron in the "yellow vests", that would appear in the finance law the obligation for the chairs of boards and CEOs of French companies realizing more than more than 1 billion euros in turnover to "pay their taxes in France, regardless of their domiciliation".

© 2019 AFP