Filenews 21 December 2023 - by Eleftheria Paizanou
Democracy will find itself inconsistent with the European Directive on rules for payment service providers in the field of VAT, as it is once again delaying in harmonizing with European recommendations.
Cyprus will have to adopt the relevant European Union Directive by 31 December, however, the relevant regulations and the bill were submitted by the Ministry of Finance to Parliament only on 8 December, although the Council of Ministers had approved the legislation a month before the deadline.
With yesterday's approval of the state budget for 2024, the work of the Parliament for this year was completed. Therefore, the relevant regulations will be examined by Parliament's Finance Committee in the new year. This EU Directive amends the existing VAT Directive, which provides that Member States, in the context of strengthening anti-fraud measures, should ensure that payment service providers keep sufficiently detailed information and submit to the authorities the details of certain crossborder payments determined as such. due to the location of the payer and the location of the payee.
According to the explanatory memorandum of the legislation, the relevant provisions provide for the obligation of payment providers to keep a detailed record of payments in relation to the services they provide every quarter for supplies or supplies of services deemed to be delivered or supplied in another Member State, where they correspond to more than 25 cross-border transactions for each person and to submit them to the Commissioner of Taxation through the electronic payment information system.
At the same time, any person who fails to comply with the regulations is guilty of a criminal offence and is subject to a fine of up to €20,000 or imprisonment for up to 12 months or both sentences together. According to the Ministry of Finance, the non-timely adoption of the package will not allow the proper functioning of the central electronic payment information system.
