The long-standing
battle in securing tax revenues in the European Union has led to the adoption
of the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) as a key tool to combat tax
avoidance. The measures aimed to restrict the abuse of tax laws by including
both Specific AntiAbuse Rules (SAARs) and General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR).
This article explains
GAAR under ATAD and examines its implementation challenges in Southeastern
Europe (SEE), assessing compliance levels across EU members and EU candidate
countries. We employ an in-depth legal analysis of corporate tax laws and
procedural tax rules to assess the level of conformity. It varies from full
compliance to partial implementation of substance-over-form rules to no GAAR at
all.
Despite economic and
institutional capacity limitations, some of SEE non-EU countries demonstrate a
more ambitious trajectory in legal formalization of GAAR, at time matching or
even surpassing certain EU member countries in the implementation of the key
provisions. However, this ambition remains at odds with their enforcement
capacities. Cross country comparison and evaluation based on scores for
selected GAAR criteria suggest that EU membership does offer a seat at the
table, but it does not guarantee robust compliance with GAAR requirements.