Exchange of information procedures between composite administration and transnational administrative acts

The DAC provides for the exchange of tax information in three forms: spontaneous, automatic and on request. All three types of decision-making proceedings can be qualified as ‘composite procedures’ and generate a number of situations of so-called ‘transnationality’, in which the acts adopted, or the actions performed by the administrative authorities of the Member States concerned, are based on or have effects outside the territory of the legal systems in which the authorities themselves are located. The aim of this chapter is to consider the steps of the various mechanisms of exchange of information in tax matters and conceptualise them as acts of transnational imputation and transnational effects, and, subsequently, as a form of horizontal composite procedure. Thereafter, some thoughts will be offered on the implications of these conceptualisations for the question of access to justice and judicial control of exchange of information procedures.