Sweden took over the presidency of the EU on 1 July, and their priorities for ECOFIN have been published. Our interest here is on the tax agenda.

And as the tax agenda is quite short, we set it out here in full:

“Taxation Fair and efficient tax systems are essential to achieve a level playing field for economic relations, trade and investment, as well as to protect the financial basis for public spending. To accomplish this, the EU is committed to strengthening the good governance tax principles of transparency, the exchange of information and fair tax competition. The Swedish Presidency intends to work intensely on the Commission’s proposals for new or amended Directives in the areas of savings taxation, administrative cooperation and recovery, as well as on the Code of Conduct for business taxation.

Reducing the administrative burden within the EU is an important task. The VAT invoicing proposal has the potential to reduce the administrative burden on business and includes measures to help tax authorities tackle tax fraud. The aim of the Presidency is to reach a political agreement on the proposal. Also, work will be pursued on the proposal regarding VAT on financial services and the fight against VAT fraud.

Furthermore, the ambition of the Presidency is to reach an agreement on the Tobacco Tax Directives.”

There’s also reference elsewhere in the agenda document about getting the EU act together on carbon taxes. We’ve looked quite closely, but there seems to be no explicit mention of the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base project (CCCTB). With tax revenues in freefall in most if not all EU Member States, perhaps that’s hardly surprising.