EU countries lose nearly €200 billion in sales-tax revenue every year due to fraud and errors, the European Commission today revealed.
"The amount of VAT that is slipping through the net is unacceptable, particularly given the impact such sums could have in bolstering public finances," EU Taxation Commissioner Algirdas Sementa said in a statement.
According to a commission study which covered 26 of the EU's current 28 members, a massive €193 billion was missing by tax authorities in 2011.
The biggest European economies suffered the worst losses in pure money terms. Italy lost €36 billion, while €32 billion was missing in France and €27 billion in Germany.
But as a percentage of total national income, the gap between expected VAT revenue and actual receipts was biggest in the poorer countries to the east, with a sum equal to 8.0 percent of national economic output lost in Romania and 4.5 percent in Greece.
While evaded or not-claimed tax payments are inherently hard to measure, the estimated loss adds new urgency to a series of planned European VAT reforms to hinder multinational companies from avoiding the tax.
