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Taxation and Customs Union

Central Electronic System of Payment information (CESOP)

Transmission and exchange of payment data to fight VAT fraud

On 18 February 2020, the Council adopted a legislative package to request payment service providers to transmit information on cross-border payments originating from Member States and on the beneficiary (“the payee”) of these cross-border payments. Under this package, payment service providers offering payment services in the EU will have to monitor the payees of cross-border payments and transmit information on those who receive more than 25 cross-border payments per quarter to the administrations of the Member States

This information will then be centralised in a European database, the Central Electronic System of Payment information (CESOP) where it will be stored, aggregated and cross-checked with other European databases. All information in CESOP will then be made available to anti-fraud experts of Member States via a network called Eurofisc.

The objective of this new measure is to give tax authorities of the Member States the right instruments to detect possible e-commerce VAT fraud carried out by sellers established in another Member State or in a non-EU country.

The measure respects the data protection rules. Only information related to payments that are likely to be connected to an economic activity is transmitted to the tax authorities. Information on consumers and on the reason underlying the payment is not part of the transmission.

The transmission of data must start on 1 January 2024.

Implementation

In order to implement the proposal, the European Commission works with Member States’ tax administrations and payment service providers in an expert group, which provides assistance with both the implementation of the reporting obligations for payment service providers and the development of CESOP.

Among other activities, the expert group helps the Commission to:

  • Create the electronic standard form to transmit data from payment service providers;
  • Identify the technical measures for establishing, maintaining and technically managing CESOP;
  • Draft guidelines on the reporting obligations;
  • Engage with the payment sector and Member States.

The expert group also works in collaboration with an expert team composed of IT experts from Member States, which is developing the technical requirements linked to the establishment of CESOP.

11 OCTOBER 2022
CESOP - Guidelines for the reporting of payment data
English
(3.58 MB - PDF)
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