Complying with all regulatory requirements sometimes seems to be a burden whose only effect is to slow down businesses’ efficiency. Managing the VAT quarterly payments, filing for VAT returns, and constantly producing invoices can be stressful and time-consuming tasks. Nevertheless, modern technology can help businesses to comply with the VAT requirements while also increasing their competitiveness. The process of the digitalisation of taxation is having a relevant impact on the time required for VAT compliance all over the world.

SUMMARY Real-time reporting systems, in which companies are required to register their invoices with the tax authority, experience a big political push across the globe. By now it is not a question of if, but of when and how real-time reporting systems will be implemented by other states. Thus, focus needs to shift towards design requirements. Very recently, a clear recommendation has been made by the German Bundesrechnungshof: real-time reporting should be connected to blockchain technology to ensure timely and authentic data.

Closing the VAT gap, data protection and digitalisation. These are just a couple of the advantages of summitto’s real-time reporting software we have outlined in previous blog posts. In this blog post we will add yet another benefit to the list: monitoring economic activity. This can be used to develop forecasts and e.g. determine which economic sector is hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis. This additional benefit is actually one of the reasons why real-time reporting can even be interesting for a country that does not have an excessive VAT gap.

Recently we published our very first publicly accessible real-time reporting pilot and now it’s time to present our first updated version of this tool. From today onwards, our pilot also supports EU intra-Community transactions! In the following we will explain why this is such a relevant addition to our pilot, diving deeper into the latest VAT developments in the EU. However, if you already know why this is the case and you just want to try it out, go directly to: https://portal.

Last week, we made our pilot programme publicly available which allows anyone with a computer to report invoices to summitto’s real-time reporting systeem. We already briefly discussed how the pilot works in a previous blog post, but in this blog post we will provide some more detailed information on how to use the pilot! Why is summitto’s real-time reporting also relevant for you? More and more countries are implementing real-time reporting systems to close the VAT gap and streamline business processes.

The digitalisation of VAT is currently high on the EU political agenda. For example, the current president of the Council of the European Union, Portugal, will prioritise initiatives related to “the digital transformation of businesses and digital platforms, to the areas of e-commerce, payments and taxation”.[1] In this blog post we will dive deeper into the digitalisation of VAT in specific and show the benefits of digitalisation for both businesses and governments.

Report invoices yourself now! https://portal.summitto.com Over the last couple of years, we have spoken to governments, business associations and taxpayers in different parts of the world. We were even honoured to present our solution as keynote speakers to the European Commission at the ‘VAT in the Digital Age’ conference. Furthermore, we published articles, written explanatory blog posts and spoke to dozens of VAT experts. Some of them were even willing to share their knowledge in our blog series VAT Talks.

Previously, we explained why our blockchain based real-time invoice reporting system can be easily scaled to almost the entire EU and why it does not require more energy than any other invoice reporting system. In this blog post, we’ll explain why summitto’s invoice reporting system is different from a ‘regular’ invoice reporting system. One of the most important reasons is that our system guarantees the confidentiality of the taxpayer. That’s why we also refer to TX++ as a confidential real-time invoice reporting system.

Blockchain and VAT: an Introduction VAT fraud costs European Union (EU) Member States an estimated 50 billion euro on an annual basis. In total, the difference between the expected amount of VAT collected and the actually collected VAT (the VAT gap) is 137.5 billion euro .[1] Several Member States are considering disproportionate measures to fight this fraud. None of them seem just. That’s why we’ll discuss the potential of blockchain in fighting VAT fraud.