The Dutch Association of Tax Advisers publishes view on Dutch proposal implementing the EU CESOP Directive

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• CESOP – An EU-wide VAT transactional reporting obligation for payments

The Dutch Association of Tax advisers (in Dutch: “de Nederlandse Orde van Belastingadviseurs” or “NOB”) has published additional comments and questions (in Dutch) with regard to the recently published legislative proposal to implement CESOP in the Netherlands (sent to the Dutch House of Representative on October 24, 2022).

The NOB regularly provides public comments on legislative proposals to enhance tax law quality and the protection of taxpayers’ rights. The NOB published quite a number of observations relation to the CESOP proposal. In particular, the response calls for attention to the following points:

• Penalty provisions
  The NOB is of the opinion that the current framework which included significant fines of up to EUR 900.000 per quarter (EUR 3.6 million/year) is not sufficiently clear. Currently, only the maximum fine is defined in the law, but no guidance is given on how fines up to that maximum will be applied in practice.
• Use of data for other taxes
  Also critical comments and questions has been placed about whether the use of the CESOP data by the Dutch Tax Authorities may be used for other than the purpose defined in CESOP regulations: combating VAT fraud. The NOB questions what legal basis the State Secretary sees for using the data outside these situations and what data is involved.
• Adherence to EU guidelines
  To support a consistent explanation of the rules in a European context and provide legal certainty, the NOB requests the Dutch government to acknowledge that the interpretation and application of the proposed legislation in the Netherlands should be in line with the Guidelines (see our earlier post on this) previously published by the Commission and the FAQs to be published. In the current proposal, no comment is made in relation to this, leaving the status of the European guidance uncertain.

We will keep you updated on whether the comments will be incorporated into the legislative drafts. Please reach out to any of your usual Deloitte advisors, or contact one of our specialists below for support on making your organization CESOP-compliant.