EU asks Malta to step up its tax recovery efforts

Brussels is not impressed with the level of cooperation afforded by Malta to EU authorities when recovering taxes, according to a European Commission report.

In fact, Malta is among the countries mentioned as needing to step up efforts in this area, particularly by increasing the human resources necessary to deal with the EU mechanism in place.

In its first evaluation report of a directive introduced in 2012 to facilitate recovery of claims relating to taxes, duties and other measures across the EU, Brussels noted that, despite Malta receiving a very small number of claims from other Member States, it was still not cooperating enough, such that its recovery rate was below two per cent of all the claims received so far.

Last year, Malta received 39 requests for the recovery of taxes due to other Member States. However, the report noted that not much had been done and most of the tax due had not been recovered yet.

According to the report, one of the main problems highlighted by the Maltese tax authorities was that the human resources engaged to carry out the work generated by the EU mechanism were insufficient.

Together with Estonia, Malta is the country with the lowest number of...