In this episode of VAT Talks we discuss VAT with Madeleine Merkx. Madeleine is Partner at the tax research center of BDO and Professor of Indirect Taxes at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. Learn why Madeleine fell in love with VAT at first sight, what she thinks about (real-time) invoice reporting and why tax experts and technology experts should exchange knowledge more often. For how long have you been working in VAT and how did you end up in this field of work?

In this episode of VAT Talks we’ll be looking at the practical side of VAT with Marinus Peters, partner at INSynQ. Marinus has many years of experience in assisting companies with the implementation of SAP systems and enables them to improve their business processes. Learn more about SAP, why Marinus believes that more countries will introduce an invoice reporting system and why the European Union should prioritise the harmonisation of VAT legislation.

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.

In the fourth episode of VAT Talks, we discuss VAT with Charlène Herbain. We are very pleased that Charlène Herbain accepted our invitation, she is lecturer at the University of Luxembourg and the University of Louvain. Furthermore, she works as a VAT expert for Ernst & Young in the Financial Services office. In this VAT Talks, we discuss VAT in Belgium, the importance of the EU in fighting fraud and the fact that VAT actually stands for Very Attractive Tax!

VAT Talks with Alfredo Collosa In this episode of VAT Talks we speak with Alfredo Collosa, who has been working in taxation (with i.a. AFIP, CIAT and IMF) for more than 30 years. We are pleased to discuss VAT with a tax expert from Latin-America, as that region pioneered in the usage of e-invoicing and invoice reporting systems (see Figure 1). In this article, Alfredo explains why this development could occur specifically in Latin-America, we discuss the differences between Latin-America and the EU and he tells us why taxation is not boring at all.

VAT Talks with Zsolt Szatmari In our blogpost series “VAT Talks” we speak with VAT experts from all over the world to learn more about VAT, VAT fraud and everything related to VAT. For this episode we had the honour to speak with Zsolt Szatmari, who is a managing senior of the VAT Knowledge Group at the IBFD.[1] In this episode we discuss the innovative VAT system in Hungary, Zsolt will give advice on how to prevent being held liable for VAT fraud and we learn that VAT has a beauty that not yet has been recognized.

VAT Talks with VAT-expert Redmar Wolf In our new blogpost series “VAT Talks” we speak with VAT experts from all over the world to learn more about VAT, VAT fraud and everything related to VAT. For this episode we had the honour to speak with Redmar Wolf, who works as a VAT attorney with the law firm Baker McKenzie, as a professor of Tax Law (Indirect Taxes) at the University of Groningen and as a Deputy-Justice at the District court of Arnhem-Leeuwarden.

Photo by Rodolfo Clix from Pexels. In our previous blogpost we discussed that the scalability issues sometimes attributed to blockchain do not necessarily apply to our invoice reporting system, TX++. That same blogpost brought us to the idea of busting some other myths that are too often brought up when talking about blockchain and VAT. In this first episode of Myths about blockchain for VAT we will show that a blockchain for VAT does not have to require enormous amounts of energy unlike many other blockchain-based systems.

Many have emphasised the potential of blockchain technology in the field of taxation and VAT.[1] However, applying blockchain to taxation is often seen as something that is only possible in the long run, mainly because of scalability issues attributed to blockchain technology. In this blogpost, we clarify that the latter statement is not correct given the specific requirements in the field of taxation. We will first analyse the number of invoices sent within the European Union (EU), in order to estimate how many invoices per second an invoice reporting system should be able to process (this was not as easy as it sounds!

@Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash An open source software 101 for public officials In April 2020 the Dutch government announced its support to open source software. State secretary for the Interior Raymond Knops wrote in a letter to the Parliament: “My appeal to public services is to release the source code, unless they have good reasons not to”.[1] The usage of open source software has been increasing within governments all over the world.