Tax Fraud Investigation Framework: Tax Crimes and Enforcement in the European Union: Solutions for Law, Policy, and Practice

One of key obstacles to timely and effective cross-border tax fraud investigations stems from the disparate approaches found across Europe. The Tax Fraud Investigation Framework (TFIF) is a toolkit developed within the PROTAX project. Since one of the aims of this book is to offer practical and user-friendly solutions for key stakeholders in tax enforcement, this chapter is devoted to the TFIF, which combines expertise from academia and law enforcement practitioners. The TFIF is designed to harmonize and support law and tax enforcement agencies in order to facilitate successful investigations and prosecutions against tax fraud at national and transnational levels. It aims at promoting: (i) a consistent and logical procedural approach to countering tax fraud at national and EU levels; (ii) common methods and techniques for investigating and prosecuting tax fraud; (iii) a harmonized standard for working across different agencies (multi-agency working) at national and EU levels; (iv) best practices in order to prevent and counter tax fraud by discouraging the criminals from expanding into new fraud ventures; (v) savings of time and resources during cross-jurisdictional legal analysis thus enhancing initial investigation; (vi) effective pathways for transforming information to intelligence and to build an effective response to transnational VAT fraud; (vii) information on the different types of evidence necessary for securing a conviction in selected EU Member States.