EU Commission

39th Meeting of the Group on the Future of VAT regarding the Rules Applicable to the Travel and Tourism Sector

On 14 October 2022, the Group on the Future of VAT discussed VAT issues inherent to the travel and tourism sectors. This was made in light of the previous assessments carried out by the European Commission, which concluded that existing VAT rules are not correctly addressing the digital market of travel services.

The Commission plans to adopt a legislative VAT package that should focus on:

• Reforming the Special VAT scheme for travel agents due to inconsistencies in treatments between EU and non-EU operators;
• proposing four new VAT packages for passenger transport, which (i) should eliminate heavy administrative burdens and provide more legal certainty to operators, (ii) harmonise the scope of existing exemptions for international transport, (iii) tax intra-EU transport services and (iv) promote green transport; and
• proposing options for making supplies of goods to non-EU travellers exempt.

The agenda of the meeting can be accessed here.

More info can be found here.