Study contributing to an impact assessment on Council Directive 2008/118/EC concerning the general arrangements for excise duty : final report

This Study serves as the Final Report for the DG TAXUD Project "Study contributing to an Impact Assessment on Council Directive 2008/118/EC concerning the general arrangements for excise duty", which was conducted under the Framework Contract no. TAXUD/2015/CC/32. The Study includes a baseline assessment of a series of issues that emerged from the previous evaluation of the Directive and analyses how these problems may evolve if no action at the EU level is taken. The scope of work includes four main problem areas: customs-excise, duty paid business-to-business (B2B), exceptional situations, and low-risk movements. In addition to the main problem areas, this Study also analyses selected aspects concerning risk analysis and the movement of excise goods for private use. Moreover, the Study considers a set of 13 possible policy options designed to address these problems. It assesses their implementation cost and likely impacts, focusing on the impact on fraud, administrative and compliance costs/benefits, market functioning and SMEs. The evidence collected for this Study includes data gathered from various sources of both primary and secondary nature. The information gathered for estimating compliance and administrative costs comes mostly from the large scale interview programme of Member State authorities and economic operators. The estimation of the scale of different types of fraud is based on data mining techniques and indicators of discrepancies in various statistical and tax registers. Finally, the Study compares impacts alternative policy options applying a combination of a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) methodology.