DAC 6 as Legal Tool to Tackle Tax Evasion

Abstract

Recently, Council Directive (EU) 2018/822 of 25 May 2018 amending Directive 2011/16/EU (known as CAD 6), which obliges tax intermediaries and, on occasions, the taxpayer itself, to notify the tax administration of certain cross-border tax planning mechanisms, has been transposed into the domestic legislation of the Member States —in Spain through Law 10/2020 of 29 December amending Law 58/2003 of 17 December on General Taxation—. The new duty of information obliges financial intermediaries and taxpayers to report certain schemes that go beyond tax planning and could be classified as tax abuse or evasion and, therefore, deserving of reproach from a criminal point of view. In this paper, the authors identify and analyse the main legal doubts raised by the application of this new tax information regime when it comes to tax crimes. After the aforementioned analysis, they conclude that the DAC 6 is not an adequate instrument for effectively combating tax crime defined in Article 305 of the Criminal Act.