Data Protection Rights and Tax Information Exchange in the European Union: An Uneasy Combination

Tax administrations in the European Union exchange an ever-increasing amount of information on taxation matters on a mandatory and automatic basis. This development gives rise to data protection concerns. The aim of this article is to examine how these data protection concerns have been recognized by the Union legislator in the recent and fast process towards a comprehensive automatic exchange of tax data of private taxpayers in the European Union. It will be shown that the combination of data protection rights and exchange of tax information legislation proves to be an uneasy one as the Union legislator appears reluctant to provide for data protection safeguards in Union legislation on tax information exchange.