Fiscalis - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements

Budget for 2021-2027

Rationale and design of the programme

The Fiscalis programme is an EU cooperation programme that enables national tax administrations to create and exchange information and expertise. It helps Member States to develop and run major trans-European information technology tax systems, as well as establishing networks of officials across the EU.

Budget

Budget programming (million EUR):

^{(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.}

  Financial programming:
  - EUR 1.4 million (- 1%)
  compared to the legal basis*

^{* Top-ups pursuant to Article 5 of the multiannual financial framework regulation are excluded from financial programming in this comparison.}

Budget performance – implementation

Multiannual cumulative implementation rate at the end of 2022 (million EUR):

Annual voted budget implementation (million EUR)⁽¹⁾:

^{(1) Voted appropriations (C1) only.}

Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

• In 2022, one action contributed directly to climate neutrality: EUR 3.7 million were committed in order to support the implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will promote climate carbon neutrality by 2050, avoid carbon leakage and ensure that EU companies can compete on a level playing field. In addition, EUR 0.3 million were committed for an administrative arrangement with the Joint Research Centre, also on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism⁽¹⁾.
• On 13 December 2022, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on the implementation of the new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Under the political agreement, the mechanism will enter into force in its transitional phase on 1 October 2023 and its implementation will be centralised at the Commission level, as opposed to implementation by the individual Member States. This has led to the fact that the Commission’s cost for developing the mechanism’s information technology system will be substantially higher than initially planned. In addition, the entry into force in 2023 urges the kick-start of the related information technology activities.
• In addition, the programme continued indirectly supporting the Green Deal by means of reinforced digitalisation of information technology taxation systems and related cooperation actions.

^{(1) These amounts reflect DG Taxation and Customs Union’s commitments linked to the programme’s budget line (i.e. co-delegations to other DGs are excluded).}

Gender

Contribution to gender equality (million EUR) (*):

<sup>(*) Based on the applied gender contribution methodology, the following scores are attributed at the most granular level of intervention possible:
- 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality;
- 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective but not as the main reason for the intervention;
- 0: non-targeted interventions (interventions that are expected to have no significant bearing on gender equality);
- 0*: score to be assigned to interventions with a likely but not yet clear positive impact on gender equality.</sup>

 The Fiscalis programme’s interventions are split relating to gender equality score as follows:

• Score 0: relates to information technology expenditure, in particular on the development and operation of European electronic systems, which does not target the promotion of gender equality.
• Score 0*: relates to the remaining types of expenditure, i.e. collaboration activities, training, studies and communication, for which a potential to promote gender equality has been identified.

At the policy level, the programme’s objective is to support tax cooperation across the EU. DG Taxation and Customs Union takes note of the potential relevance of gender equality in the taxation domain in light of, inter alia, taxation redistribution and multiplier effects.

At the same time, the programme has implemented an internal tracking mechanism in its Activity Reporting Tool, which enables the identification of collaborative activities with a direct link to gender equality.

Based on this tracking mechanism, it can be confirmed that no collaborative programme activities took place in either 2021 or 2022 regarding gender equality. For the time being, no interventions have been planned or identified for 2023.

In the general collaborative actions, a total of 1 915 participants identified themselves as female and 1 976 as male⁽¹⁾.

^{(1) The main beneficiaries of the programme are the tax authorities in the participating countries who decide at their own discretion to whom they delegate the specific programme events according to the activity’s agenda and objectives. The figures relate to the 0* activities in 2022, even if none were identified as having gender equality impact. The data reflects the information available in the Activity Reporting Tool as of 23.2.2023.}

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

•  The programme allocates the majority of the budget to information technology capacity-building actions, defined as a top priority in the programme's regulation (recital 12). Among the information technology capacity-building actions supported by the programme, priority is given to the European electronic systems that are necessary for the implementation of the general and specific objectives of the programme.
• Regarding the amounts committed in 2021 for digital goals, due to the overlapping of the two iterations of the programme, the budget was split among the two programmes. The amount above covers information technology procurement only, excluding collaborative activities on e-commerce given their minimal impact on the programme budget.
• In 2021, EUR 22.2 million were committed to information technology procurement from the Fiscalis programme 2021-2027 for the period July to December 2021 and EUR 0.2 million were committed from the Fiscalis 2020 programme for the period January to June 2021. In 2022, the committed expenses for the development and maintenance of European electronic systems were EUR 34.6 million (January to December). This represents an increase of roughly 55% in overall committed budget to information technology procurement under the programme between 2022 and 2021, which is to be understood in the context of high inflation and the internal allocation of budget between the Customs programme and the Fiscalis programme in 2021 and 2022. In addition, it should be taken into account that several grants for collaboration actions were signed in 2021 (lasting for 2-3 years); as a result, the available budget for programming of the information technology procurement for 2022 was higher than in 2021.
• In 2022, the high inflation required close monitoring of the scheduled budget for 2022 and 2023, especially in terms of costs linked with ensuring the development and functioning of the European electronic systems for taxation. In this context, the Commission assessed the actual information technology spending against initial information technology budget allocations.

Budget performance – outcomes

• The year 2022 was the second year of implementation of the Fiscalis programme following the adoption of the programme regulation in May 2021. Since 2021 was a year of transition from the previous Fiscalis 2020 programme, 2022 can be considered the first year of full implementation of the new Fiscalis programme.
• In 2022, the programme activities were implemented under the 2021-2023 multiannual work programme, contributing to the overall EU priorities to support economic recovery and the digital transition. Throughout the year, the programme continued to support tax authorities and taxation in order to enhance the functioning of the internal market.
• Overall, the progress of the performance indicators is on track, with some exceptions which can be explained by methodological changes in the collection of data (e.g. the number of trained officials no longer reflects data from Member States, see below for further explanation), by the new programme implementation concepts or by external factors. For example, the number of actions in the area of EU law and policy is lower than expected because the milestone was based on the extrapolation of the first month of implementation of the Fiscalis programme (December 2021), which might not be representative of a full year. A review of the milestones and targets of these indicators in 2024 should ensure their adaptation to the new programme realities, as anticipated in the 2021 programme statements.
• The programme’s collaborative activities provided forums to exchange expertise and best practices among the participating countries and between them and the Commission on various aspects of taxation and policy measures and their operational implementation.
• Following the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, an increased number of physical meetings took place in 2022, while online collaboration remained strong. The increasing proportion of physical meetings allowed for closer human interaction and networking. This had a positive impact on the networking opportunities created by the programme: more than 80% of the participants reported strong satisfaction with this aspect. With the programme in full swing, the collaboration activities bore a high number of outputs/recommendations that were reported as useful and well used in the administrations.
• In 2022, the support to the development of the European electronic systems for taxation remained a focal point of the programme. Despite the impact of high inflation in information technology procurement contracts supported by the programme, 28 European electronic systems funded by the programme were operational in 2022. The programme was instrumental in guaranteeing business continuity of the European electronic systems for taxation and this is confirmed by the fact that the availability of the European electronic systems supported by the programme remained close to 100%, in line with the set milestone of 99.6%.
• The availability of the common communication networks (CCN and CCN2) was just below the milestone, which was mostly due to planned unavailability to install patches and upgrades, but some of the unavailability was unplanned and caused by network issues. However, the availability, even if below the milestone, can be considered as acceptable by information technology standards. It is supported by the use of the systems that continued to grow in terms of both number of messages exchanged and the number of consultations carried out.
• The number of applications of information technology simplified procedures in 2022 is slightly below the milestone for 2022 (less than 5%), but if compared to the value recorded in 2021 when there were 353 254 applications reported for half a year, it has increased by at least 10%, which shows a favourable trend.
• In terms of training, 2022 was the first year of implementation of the programme, given that in 2021 training activities continued to be supported by remaining procurement contracts from the Fiscalis programme 2020. With regard to the number of 8 830 of tax officials trained in 2022 by using common training, it should be mentioned that the method of data collection has changed from 2022. As a result, the data provided is no longer in line with the milestone. From 2022, the value for e-learning includes only the number of professionals who followed the courses in the EU portal (8 640), together with the number of tax officials who participated in common learning event programme events (15) and information technology training sessions supported by the Fiscalis programme (175). This justifies the significant decrease of tax officials trained if compared to the data registered in 2021, where the recorded values also took the Member States’ national data into consideration. Overall, 77 153 professionals (including tax officials and other tax professionals) benefited from the training opportunities offered by the programme.
• In parallel, it is worth highlighting that in 2022 the Internal Audit Service positively assessed DG Taxation and Customs Union’s performance management system, including that of the Customs and Fiscalis programmes. More specifically, the Internal Audit Service’s final report concluded that the performance management system put in place by DG Taxation and Customs Union is adequately designed, efficient and effective, enabling to plan, monitor and report on its achievements. No critical or very important issues were found, and the improvements suggested were already addressed in the current reporting exercise to ensure data consistency and alignment among the various reporting exercises.

Contribution to the sustainable development goals