Tax Crimes and Enforcement in the European Union

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

EU member states lose hundreds of billions of euros to tax evasion every year. Tax crimes have a significant impact on the functioning of national and international economies and on the global financial system. Not only do they affect the actors involved and the state that has been deprived of tax revenues, but the citizens of those states suffer too.

Tax Crimes and Enforcement in the European Union presents the findings of the EU-funded PROTAX project. Chapters written by leading experts discuss EU and national legal measures and institutional practices to counter anti-money laundering, corruption, organised crime, and tax evasion. Human factors and their role in countering tax crimes are also considered as well as whistleblower protection legislation which gives readers a rounded view of current practices within the EU.

This book provides a timely and valuable comparative study of the legal and institutional background of the prosecution of tax crimes, as well as an analysis of legal measures and institutional practices to combat tax crimes on national and EU levels. It also contributes to the development of an advanced European Security Model for understanding human factors in countering tax crimes. It equips policy makers and law enforcement agencies with the dynamic toolkit they need to improve their understanding of tax crimes in the EU and provides solutions for preventing, detecting, and investigating tax crimes.