Central Electronic System of Payment Information (CESOP)
With the help of the payment information, the Member States of the European Union should be able to better combat VAT fraud, especially in the area of cross-border e-commerce. Through access to the payment data of the payment service providers, the tax authorities should receive information that was previously not or not directly available. This should enable the tax administration to identify fraudulent businesses more quickly and to determine in which Member State supplies of goods and services are deemed to have taken place, in particular in accordance with the provisions of Title V of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax (OJ L 347, 11.12.2006, p. 1).
Overview
From 1 January 2024, payment service providers must record certain cross-border payments and transmit them to the Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt) on a quarterly basis.
The national legal basis (§22g UStG- Special Obligations for Payment Service Providers) was implemented within the Annual Tax Act 2022 in the area of value added tax.
The obligation to record and transmit cross-border payments by payment service providers is due to a legislative package adopted by the European Council on 18 February 2020. Payment service providers will be required to provide information on cross-border payments from Member States and on the beneficiary ("payee") of these cross-border payments. Under this package, payment service providers offering payment services in the EU will have to monitor the payees of cross-border payments and provide information to Member State administrations on those receiving more than 25 cross-border payments per quarter.
This information is then centralised in a European database, the Central Electronic System of Payment Information (CESOP), where it is stored, aggregated and cross-checked with other European databases. All the information in CESOP is made available to Member States' anti-fraud experts for further analysis through a network called Eurofisc.
Further Information
Contact
Federal Central Tax Office
Referat St III 9 - CESOP
An der Küppe 1
53225 Bonn
Jurisdiction:
CESOP
