Collective Commentary about the New Package Travel Directive

600 COLLECTIVE COMMENTARY ABOUT THE NEW PACKAGE TRAVEL DIRECTIVE We highlight the two main objectives of the 2015 Directive on package travel and linked travel arrangements, which are the ones that drive it: the creation of a high level of consumer protection and the approximation of legislation between the Member States on travel combined already linked travel services. These objectives have some importance in our work. Although for fiscal purposes the Package Travel Directive does not present a direct interest, we cannot neglect that, as we pointed out, the Tax Law is based on an underlying economic reality, contractually recognized at the civil or commercial level. A “package travel contract”, a term used by the Directive, externalizes an act of consumption or expense, subject to VAT, if the service provider under this contract is an entrepreneur according to its legislation, and provided that it is onerous or self-consumption subject, as already noted. On the other hand, if the package travel legislation tends to approximate between the Member States (objective that is intended by the Directive we are commenting on) this also favours an approximation of Tax Law and contributes to the creation of a single and more competitive market; then it shares ends in the broadest sense with the Fiscal Directives, especially those dealing with VAT. As is known, the harmonization of VAT in the European area is not an end in itself, but must be indispensable for the achievement of the objectives of the Union. Then, we must notice that, neither Directive (EU) 2015/2302, nor the General Law of Consumers and Users in relation to combined trips, deal directly with the fiscal field. Yes indirectly, as part of the duties of information and in accordance with other rights of consumers and users. The reformulation of the package travel legal regime, and especially its approximation in the different European legal systems affected, does help to make economic operations more clear and equal and thatmay favour a less questionable tax treatment or less susceptible to interpretation. In this sense, we cannot forget, as art. 13 of the General Tax Law that “ the legal obligations will be demanded according to the legal nature of the act, act or business carried out, whatever the form or denomination that the interested parties may have given it… ”. Those interested will tend to a correct fiscal qualification if the legal regime of the reality to be classified has few elements of escape, interpretation or gaps. Improving the substantive treatment of taxed economic reality, of course, helps to eliminate system fissures, propitiators of avoidance and tax evasion. However, there are references to taxation in the Directive, from the point of view that consumers have the right to know about the cost of the trip from the service provider. But taxation, as regards package travel, is not, in itself, an element inherent in the package travel contract, but an addition to it that may condition the contracting of services. Fiscal or legal-tax relations are not