Em 2025 o Conselho da UE está pronto para moldar o papel da tributação nas políticas do bloco pelos próximos cinco anos.

With a fresh European Commission ready to make its mark and Poland steering the EU Council presidency, 2025 is poised to shape the role of taxation in the bloc’s policies for the next ve years.

The next year will put into practice what stakeholders and observers have been anticipating since Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the choice to include taxation in the portfolio of Wopke Hoekstra, the commissioner responsible for climate, net zero, and clean growth — a move that was expected to dilute the role of taxation in the EU.

“The next mandate will surely focus on integration of taxation into broader economic strategies to address disparities, foster fairness, and attract investment, as highlighted in the Draghi Report on competitiveness,” Aleksandar Ivanovski, director of tax policy at CFE Tax Advisers Europe, said in a report published December 10, 2024.

“Bundling together responsibilities on climate and taxation is a novel approach from the Commission. It seems to prelude a shift away from corporate tax as a main focus area and underscores the Commission’s ambition to leverage taxation to drive forward climate protection goals,” the law rm Freshelds said in an October 2024 article on its website. The use of taxation to support broader policy goals may also explain why Hoekstra emphasized during a December 2024 meeting of the Economic and Financial Aairs Council that the energy taxation directive should be underpinned by two legal bases: taxation and environment. The Hungarian council presidency, however, removed the environmental basis. “Some policies came into existence rst and foremost for giving the government a source of funding, and do not have necessarily another inherent logic," Hoekstra said, explaining to Tax Notes during a December 2024 interview why he insisted on a dual legal basis. He said the 20th century and the rst part of the 21st century saw governments come up with taxes to encourage certain behaviors or support specic policies. “This is a big philosophical debate in the world of tax: whether you should also advance other policies 29/01/25, 14:39 How 2025 Will Weave Tax Into the EU’s Policy Baskets | Tax Notes through what you tax and what you don't. My view is to carefully calibrate" the use of taxation to shape behavior, he said. Hoekstra’s Tax Hooks Taxation is expected to crop up in several nontax packages. For example, the upcoming Circular Economy Act could include a proposal to apply favorable VAT treatment to products containing recycled materials, as hinted in November 2024 during a Sustainability Packaging Summit by Wolfgang Trunk, policy ocer at the commission’s DirectorateGeneral for Environment. In the same vein, the tax commissioner’s input on the e-commerce communication, expected February 5, could include recommendations on VAT relief for donated surplus and returned goods. Hoekstra told Tax Notes that he nds it odd that destroying those products is a more attractive option than donating them. For example, the business models of online sales platforms produce a “lot of waste and a lot of destruction,” he said. Henna Virkkunen, the commission's executive vice president for technological sovereignty in charge of the bloc's e-commerce communication, promised the European Parliament that she will take “a holistic approach, looking at eective customs, tax, and safety controls and other monitoring, sustainability standards . . . and ensuring fair competition and a level playing eld.” In November 2024 the commission launched a feasibility study on a model for the comprehensive taxation of environmental harm generated by goods and services in the EU. The feasibility study is a pilot project requested by other EU institutions in connection with the 2024 budget. “Using taxation to change consumer behavior is key to combating climate change and reducing our impact on the environment,” a November 2023 budget document says. It adds that the objective of the study would be to “determine a model that calculates the nancial cost of the environmental harm caused by products and services and thereby help to establish the appropriate tax rate to be applied to them.” The budget document says the model should go beyond the energy taxation directive, which is now under review. A possible proposal to remove the 0 percent VAT rate for the aviation and maritime industries could be part of a tourism package, which would fall under the purview of Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the new commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism. “Your 29/01/25, 14:39 How 2025 Will Weave Tax Into the EU’s Policy Baskets | Tax Notes work will be essential in reaching our 2030 targets as part of the European Green Deal,” von der Leyen said in Tzitzikostas's mission letter. Finally, an EU ocial said in a November 2023 Friends of Europe podcast that the commission would make behavioral taxation a priority in 2025. In the summer of 2023 a unit on behavioral taxation was created within the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, mainly driven by the growth of the team working on the carbon border adjustment mechanism.

The rst item expected is a revision of the tobacco taxation rules, as has been requested by member states. BEFIT or Be Gone Some important signals on direct taxation might come from the council under the Polish presidency. According to a draft agenda, on May 13 EU nance ministers are expected to provide guidance on the proposal for a Business in Europe: Framework for Income Taxation (BEFIT) directive and on the proposal for a transfer pricing directive. Then, on June 20, EU nance ministers are expected to adopt conclusions on fair taxation.

The BEFIT proposal, the transfer pricing proposal, and the Head Oce Taxation (HOT) proposal to make life simpler for small and medium-size entities are the only direct taxation initiatives mentioned by von der Leyen in her mission letter to Hoekstra, alongside the need to keep “the highest level of ambition in ghting tax fraud, tax evasion, and tax avoidance,” and the implementation of the OECD's two-pillar global tax reform plan. Reaction to the proposals has not been good: HOT negotiations were paused, EU countries expressed a preference for a nonbinding forum on transfer pricing rather than a directive, and the BEFIT proposal is opposed by several national parliaments.

An upcoming ECOFIN discussion might put pressure on the commission to withdraw its proposal for a transfer pricing directive so the council can adopt a decision on a proposed transfer pricing forum, as the legal service has suggested that member states cannot adopt competing proposals.

On January 8 the council’s high-level working party on tax questions will further discuss the taxation aspects of the Draghi report. ECOFIN discussed the report in a closed-door meeting in November 2024.

During that meeting, “ministers pointed out that although taxation is not the central topic of the report, it can play a certain role in increasing competitiveness at [the] EU level. However, the impact of Draghi’s taxation-related recommendations should be carefully 29/01/25, 14:39 How 2025 Will Weave Tax Into the EU’s Policy Baskets | analyzed before deciding on their possible implementation,” according to an ECOFIN report to the European Council on tax issues, adopted December 10, 2024.

“Decluttering and simplication emerged as the main aspects enabling taxation to contribute more to competitiveness,” the ECOFIN report says. However, “the emphasis on simplication in Commissioner Hoekstra's agenda appears to be more of a stated priority than a central concern.

His remarks on the importance of decluttering are often accompanied by signicant caveats, such as the responsibilities of Member States, the need to balance avoiding over-regulation with identifying regulatory gaps, and the aim to simplify without compromising standards,” PwC said in a December 2024 tax policy alert. The commission is expected to present a “competitiveness compass,” the nature of which is somewhat obscure at this s

tage, in January. PwC bemoaned what it called Hoekstra's lack of ambition regarding the use of taxation to pursue the broader agenda of European competitiveness. However, the commission has received somewhat mixed signals from EU countries on that issue.

The December 2024 ECOFIN report says some nance ministers “stressed that the functioning of the internal market is essential for competitiveness," and that it would be worth analyzing further "how to remove taxation-related obstacles to cross-border businesses and investments.

” But EU leaders have repeatedly removed all references to taxation in joint statements on the strengthening of competitiveness. Recent input from EU countries' nancial counselors also shows that there is little enthusiasm for completing the Capital Markets Union, which is central in the competitiveness talks, through tax convergence. Finally, the arrival of President-elect Trump at the White House January 20 might give some indication about the future of pillar 1 of the global tax reform plan. Hoekstra said in the interview that several actions are overdue regarding pillars 1 and 2 of the global tax reform plan, especially the taxation of digital services.

“I think it’s important and a matter of good faith that we diligently engage in this conversation with the new American administration — that’s clearly step one,” Hoekstra said. “Having said that, it’s important that we do not wait for eternity to tackle a problem.” 29/01/25, 14:39 How 2025 Will Weave Tax Into the EU’s Policy Baskets | Tax Notes However, without success with the United States on pillar 1, the EU will need to go back to the drawing board, he said.

The council is expected to reach a general approach to pillar 2 in March in the ninth directive on administrative cooperation (DAC9), which will govern pillar 2 information exchange. The Polish council presidency said it also wants to initiate a debate on “enhancing administrative cooperation in the area of gambling to address challenges for [the] internal market arising from digitalization of [the] economy.”

Denmark will take over the EU Council presidency in July. The country is known for taking a hard line toward tax avoidance. It has pushed for stronger defensive measures against countries that are considered noncooperative for tax purposes.

In June 2024 EU nance ministers agreed to monitor the eectiveness of their defensive measures. Six months later, they instructed the Code of Conduct Group on business taxation to continue monitoring member states to assess how they are applying defensive measures and to report back on further progress in that area.