VAT and International Trade's Crossroads: Right, Left or Straight On?

The current VAT system for intra EU B2B is susceptible to fraud. This is one of the main reasons why the European Commission has tabled a proposal for a definitive VAT system based on the destination principle. On the other hand, there are Member States that want to introduce a general reverse charge mechanism in the fight against VAT fraud. While the definitive VAT system proposed by the European Commission taxes all supplies in the supply chain, the general reverse charge mechanism has the opposite effect. Under this mechanism effective collection of VAT is postponed to the last link in the supply chain. In this article, the authors evaluate both systems as well as the current system to assess which system is best