Carousel fraud

Missing trader fraud (also called missing trader intra-community, MTIC, or carousel fraud) is the theft of Value Added Tax (VAT) from a government by organised crime gangs who exploit the way VAT is treated within multi-jurisdictional trading where the movement of goods between jurisdictions is VAT-free. This allows the fraudster (person who commits fraud) to charge VAT on the sale of goods, and then instead of paying this over to the government's collection authority, to simply abscond, taking the VAT with him. The term "missing trader" refers to the fact that the trader goes missing with the VAT. "Carousel" refers to a more complex type of fraud in which VAT and goods are passed around between companies and jurisdictions, similar to how a carousel goes round and round.

In the European Union (EU) the European Union Value Added Tax ("EU VAT") allows merchants to charge VAT on the sale of goods when they sell goods to another member state.

Figures released in September 2006 by Eurocanet, a project sponsored by the European Commission, appear to show that the United Kingdom is the main victim of this fraud – the UK lost an estimated €12.6 billion during 2005–6 – followed by Spain and Italy, which each lost over €2 billion. From 1 June 2007, the UK introduced changes to the way that VAT is charged on mobile phones and computer chips to help combat fraud. UK plans to introduce changes to the way VAT is charged on a wide range of goods from December 2006 were aborted because of failure to reach an agreement with other EU member states.

In brief, a business that buys and sells goods charges VAT to those to whom it sells ('output tax'), and is charged VAT by those from whom it purchases ('input tax'). It can reclaim (subject to various rules) the VAT it pays, and so passes to the Government the net VAT it collects (being output tax less input tax). In this way, a business acts as a tax collector on behalf of the Government.

Within the EU VAT, member states charge VAT at differing rates on goods as a form of indirect taxation. All exports of goods however are tax free. This leads to the situation where an exporter will be able to reclaim VAT from the Government, as it will have been charged VAT by the business from which it purchased the goods, and will owe the Government nothing because it has sold the goods tax free.

The fraud exploits this reclamation of tax. It lends itself to small, high value items, such as microchips and mobile telephones.

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Wikipedia