The VAT gap in the European Union (EU) is expected to increase to €164 billion in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.[1] Confronted with this situation of emergency, the European Commission (EC) has placed the reduction of the VAT gap high on its agenda in order to provide Member States with additional fundings to tackle the economic crisis. The “Mind the VAT gap” initiative of the European Commission aims at promoting projects at the level of tax authorities that have proven to be effective in significantly reducing the VAT gap.

Previously we analysed the outcomes of the Fiscalis workshop where real-time reporting was discussed. We showed how summitto’s solution could help solve many issues that were raised during the workshop. However, some questions remained which were posed to the VAT Expert Group (VEG). With this blog post, we hope we can help by providing feedback on these questions. In the following we try to answer questions around (1) design, (2) harmonisation, (3) transmission of the invoices and (4) benefits for business.

Real-time reporting, Continuous Transaction Controls (CTC), Transaction based reporting (TBR). Whatever you want to call it, it’s a hot topic! We recently saw many countries implementing such systems, with France being the latest European Union (EU) Member State to decide so. Furthermore, real-time reporting is also high on the agenda of the European Commission (EC) as one could have read in July’s Tax Package.[1] The publication of the results of the latest Fiscalis[2] workshop makes this even more clear.

In previous blog posts we explained how our real-time reporting system (sometimes called CTC system) is able to reduce VAT fraud and close the VAT gap without collecting any actual invoice data. Our system has many similarities to existing real- and near-time reporting systems (after this referred to as a ‘reporting system’), which an increasing number of EU Member States are implementing. We support this development as we believe that reporting has really proved to be an excellent tool to close the VAT gap.