Intra-Community VAT carousels

In the absence of a clear Community policy for the battle against carousel fraud in practice, it is up to the ECJ to decide to what extent the national authorities of the EU Member States are authorized to recover their tax losses from businesses involuntary involved in VAT carousels. The authors expect that the ECJ will make an important contribution to the improvement of the current European VAT system in that its decision in four pending cases may persuade the Member States to overcome their hesitancy to finally make the legal system less vulnerable to fraud.