EU Consultation

Lighter automatic exchange for companies

Commission calls for ideas to simplify EU DAC texts

by Alessandro Galimberti

3 February 2026

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2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

The Dacs
Target: more efficiency

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

A consolidated version of the EU Dacs to ease the burden on businesses and make the system of data exchanged within the framework of administrative cooperation more efficient.

The public consultation opened on 15 December 2025 by the EU Commission - and which will close in a week's time, on 10 February - aims at 'long-term competitiveness' with the target of reducing the burdens associated with reporting obligations by 25 % for companies and 35 % for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Less bureaucracy and more efficiency is the mantra of an operation that, however, does not lose sight of the rationale of a system that is now in its third decade and that, over the last ten years, has seen vertical implementation on the wave of regulatory enthusiasm.

Le Dac

Since 1 January 2015, information on direct taxes has been exchanged automatically in five categories of income and capital: employment income, pensions, attendance fees and tokens, life insurance products; property and real estate income (Dac1). Information on financial accounts (Dac2), cross-border tax rulings and prior transfer pricing agreements (Dac3), country-by-country reporting (Dac4), cross-border mechanisms with potential tax avoidance risk (Dac6), income received through digital platforms (Dac7), income received by service providers for crypto-assets or operators (Dac8); information aimed at making the second pillar directive operational (Dac9). The Dac was also amended in the meantime to allow tax authorities to have access to certain AML data (Dac5).

The overlapping of directives in such a specific matter has been conducted in a basically alluvial manner, so that to date there is no consolidated version of the text. A consolidated version that could instead be the Commission's point of arrival.

Target: more efficiency

In the meantime, the public consultation - to which so far only Italian and Dutch stakeholders have responded - could facilitate the identification of any overlaps, inconsistencies or inefficient communications, so as to reduce the administrative burden. Inefficiencies, these, which had already entered into the 2024 Special Report of the European Court of Justice, which had found that the Dac had been applied inconsistently by Member States, increasing the administrative burden on companies. In addition, the threshold for reporting and selling goods under the Dac7 was found to be "inefficient and ineffective in relation to the benefits obtained". In its Special Report 2021, the Court had pointed out that the obligation to exchange only available information, coupled with the absence of an obligation to exchange all categories of income under the Dac1, affected the completeness of thedata, causing some income to escape taxation.