About us

1 About us

1.1 An overview

The strategic leadership of Tax Administrations are, with this interactive product, given an opportunity to gain valuable knowledge when it comes to building trust and increasing voluntary compliance amongst taxpayers. The wide range of information provided covers topics including communication, digitalisation and performance management.

We have brought together research with the combined experiences from a number of EU-member States’ Tax Administrations to produce guidelines that will give top-level-management support on how to strengthen trust and increase compliant behaviour. The guidelines are supported by numerous examples from across the Union.

1.2 A brief historic background

The mission originates from an agreement between the EU Economy and Finance Ministers at a meeting held on 28 April 2018 in Sofia. They agreed on the need to launch a discussion on how to improve cooperation and how Tax Administrations should work more effectively together to achieve good results in tax collection. At the Heads of Tax Administration meeting in Thessaloniki, on 13th and 14th of June, one outcome was to open a strategic dialogue and establish grounds for future cooperation. "Building trust, ensuring compliance" was identified as a common challenge. Tax Administrations want/need to reduce the tax gap and secure national income by enhancing compliance. But compliance requires taxpayers’ trust and legal certainty which is lacking, tax laws are too complex and Member States are currently competing rather than building common compliance strategies.

One way to work with these topics was to set up a project group under the Fiscalis programme and assign it to overcome the challenge of "building trust, ensuring compliance".

The Swedish Tax Administration was appointed to lead the project.

1.3 The assignment

The assignment consists of two parts:

“Draw some general conclusions and provide recommendations or other forms of support for administrations working with increasing trust and compliance.”

“Support top-level management in Tax Administrations with up to date knowledge and understandings concerning compliance and trust based on member states experiences and strategies. The work should result in clear strategic ideas and conclusions on how to increase trust and compliance.”

1.4 Our method

We have collected information mainly from the countries represented in the project group but we have also included information from other Member States. The aim was to secure knowledge and practical examples on initiatives undertaken, underway or under consideration by Member States to enhance trust and increase compliance. The members of the project group have discussed and reflected upon the differences, experiences and strategies in the different Member States to increase knowledge and find some common understandings and challenges.

Initially most meetings were traditional physical meetings but as the pandemic took hold in March 2020 all work has been conducted virtually.

1.5 The members of the project group

All members of the project group have considerable experience and interest in the area of building trust and ensuring compliance. The project group includes members working at a strategic level close to the leadership of their Tax Administration, senior managers and an academic researcher working with research and intelligence.

The members of the group and their respective Tax Administrations are as follows:

The project main contact at the EU-commission is Ms Charlotte Delsol.

Non-members of the project group assigned to the project by the Swedish Tax Administration include: