IMPLEMENTATION STATUS OF STANDARD AUDIT FILE - TAX IN THE EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES AND VALUE ADDED TAX GAP

In Romania and across the European Union member states, steps have been and are being taken to improve the collection of revenues for national budgets, and implicitly for the EU budget. The efficiency of tax administration systems also depends on the electronic reporting used to declare taxpayers' transactions and tax obligations. Thus, in 2010, the OECD's Committee on Fiscal Affairs published the second version of the Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T) electronic reporting system, which is designed to contribute to the performance of effective audits by internal and external auditors and by tax authorities. SAF-T version 2.0 electronic reporting has been adopted by the EU Member States under review, in a limited or extended form, as appropriate. This article describes the stages of implementation of electronic reporting in various EU member states and analyzes the correlation between the stage of implementation and Value Added Tax (VAT) collection for the budget, with VAT revenues accounting for a significant share of total budget revenues.