Michael Lang & Christine Obermair 
Tax Compliance Costs for Companies in an Enlarged European Community 

It’s widely acknowledged that the administrative and regulatory obligations for tax matters represent a heavy time and cost consuming burden, especially for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Tax compliance procedures are recognized to be too complicated for SMEs. This problem becomes even more serious in those cases where SMEs expand their activities cross-border and are confronted not only with their national tax laws, but have to comply also with obligations under national tax codes in different Member States. The highly valuable resource will tackle the issue of tax-related compliance costs from a number of perspectives: Compliance costs from a general point of view: The economics of the compliance costs of taxation – Compliance cost considerations in recent tax reforms – Compliance rules and their enforcement – The operational burden of compliance rules Compliance costs from the point of view of a group of companies – Compliance costs under the separate accounting approach and means to reduce these costs – Introduction of a common EU tax base as a remedy to compliance costs? – Defining a "consolidated" group under a formula apportionment system (knock-in/-out criteria) – How to share the pie: Formulary Apportionment