The Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament has recently adopted the proposal for the regulation on legal issues in relation to Inheritance Law in the European area and creation of a European certificate of inheritance, whose purpose is to facilitate the process concerning cross-border inheritances within the framework of the European Union. The approved text must now be submitted to the plenary of the European Parliament and the Council of the Ministers of Justice of the 27 Member States of the EU for approval. The adopted text is an initiative which aims to enable agility and clarity to the complexities of inheritances in which there are elements of different nationalities due to the different situations of residence of the persons concerned, as well as the location of their economic interests in several Member States of the European Union.
In this regard, the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament aims to provide inheritances having international elements establishing the regulation and the jurisdictional competence to them, giving a substantial relevance to the concept of habitual residence of the testator. Another important issue is the creation of the European certificate of inheritance. This instrument will play a significant role on legal proof in the entire area of the Union’s influence about the holder’s status of heir, legatee, administrator or executor of an estate and will grant a recognition of full and free movement in the European Union; In addition, it will serve as a title for the inscription in the public registry in a way that when the testator has properties in different States of the Union this will not involve multiple inheritance procedures.
The Spanish Council of Ministers adopted a Royal Decree to complete the transposition of Community directives known as ‘VAT package’ referred to in the new system of ‘one-stop shop’ to enable the return of VAT quotas to European businessmen, announced the Executive in a note. The new system applies to employers established in the peninsula and the Balearic Islands when they supported VAT charges in other EU countries.
The European Commission proposed a modification of the EC regulation on VAT (Value Added Tax) with the aim of facilitating on-line invoicing by means of reducing administrative constraints on companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
The EC thinks that this will help member states fight tax fraud. Brussels calculates that this initiative will allow a saving of 18,000 million Euros within the EU.
The proposal suppresses the effective disposition of the EC regulation on VAT that prevents electronic invoicing and establishes the principle that electronic invoices have the same validity. It will allow companies to adopt 100% electronic invoicing systems.
The commissioner responsible for fiscal policy László Kovács, emphasized that at the present time the national rules regarding invoicing in the territory of VAT “are excessively complicated and diverse, creating useless administrative loads for the companies that exert international activities and which facilitate the merry-go-round type of fraud”. With the proposed changes, the invoicing rules “will be much more simple, modern and complete, and at the same time they will give effective ways of fiscal control to the administrations”.
The EC Executive presented a report on the European strategy for the reduction of administrative burdens; its conclusion is that citizens and companies are already getting benefit from this initiative. The suppression of about 1,300 legislative acts representing around 10% of the total or 7,800 pages of the Official Newspaper has been proposed. The anticipated measures of reduction estimate a saving of administrative loads worth more than 30,000 million Euros.
(Source: Vlex, Noticias Legales)