Introduction As the European Commission is preparing its legislative proposal under the heading of “VAT in the Digital Age” for Q3 2022, we believe it might be a good time to share the advice experts provided to the European Commission throughout our VAT Talks series. We are very thankful that so many experts shared their views on VAT with us. This resulted in advice regarding the use of technology, the need to focus on harmonisation and simplification, and the importance of a continuous dialogue with the business community.

Introduction Many governments all over the world are currently deciding what type of real-time reporting system they want to implement. With this blog post we hope to assist these governments by showing various design options of real-time reporting. In the following we will analyse four different real-time reporting solutions after which we will compare those with summitto’s own real-time reporting solution: TX++. We will explain that TX++ can achieve the same results as any other real-time reporting system, while at the same time:

Introduction Recently the European Parliament published an excellent report discussing how to improve the exchange of information and compliance to reduce the VAT gap. In the following we will provide an overview of the main findings and analyse the conclusions made in the report. We’ll start by discussing the size of the current VAT gap and the amount of VAT fraud committed on an annual basis. At least €50 billion in VAT fraud every year The report rightfully states that it’s difficult to estimate the VAT gap “as by definition it involves the estimation of unobserved variables, such as the compliance rate.

Introduction It’s an exciting period for everyone who follows VAT news. Various countries are implementing a VAT system, others are introducing carbon taxes, while recently the e-commerce legislation in the EU went into force. All extremely interesting topics, but the most exciting of them all is the surge of real-time reporting! Multiple countries all over the world are currently in the process of implementing some variant of this tool to tackle VAT fraud.

Introduction In this week’s blog post, we had the pleasure to discuss VAT with Tiina Ruohola. Tiina is Senior Adviser Indirect Taxes at EK - Confederation of Finnish Industries and in that capacity also member of the VAT Expert Group. Learn everything about e-invoicing in Finland and what she believes is a correct balance regarding data sharing with the tax authority. She rightfully states that “all information required should always be reasonable and actually used, not just collected.

Introduction In May 2020 we published an article about how many invoices summitto’s real-time reporting system could handle. We showed that TX++ could already serve e.g. Italy (between 2 and 3 billion invoices per year)[1] and Spain (4.8 billion invoices per year).[2] At that moment in time our software could handle 700 transactions per second, which refers to a maximum of 22 billion invoices per year. It is important for reporting systems to be future-proof, and to be able to handle changes in legislation and a growth in invoice usage.

Introduction Real-time reporting is picking up pace in more and more countries in order to reduce VAT fraud and increase compliance. In our previous blog posts, we have highlighted many benefits of real-time reporting for businesses and tax authorities. This time, we want to take a different approach: we ask VAT experts. Through our VAT talks, we have collected an incredible amount of precious information on real-time reporting developments, ways of implementation, its benefits and its weaknesses.

Introduction “VAT fraud is a timing-issue” as VAT Prof. Dr. Redmar Wolf said in one of our previous blog posts. Therefore, it is essential to rapidly exchange VAT data between Member States. Several obligations, systems and institutions were put into place to realise this rapid exchange of data. The wide variety of tools resulted, as often happens in the VAT world, in many abbreviations. In the following we will try to provide some clarity regarding: the VAT Information Exchange System (VIES), Intrastat, Eurofisc and the Transaction Network Analysis (TNA).

Introduction Data minimisation and the usage of metadata are being actively investigated by countries all over the world in relation to real-time reporting. The reason for their interest in such solutions lies in the need for more secure systems which may be more resilient regarding data leaks due to cyber attacks, human errors or even snoopy public officials. Although these systems may indeed require less data in order to perform the required tasks, they are not completely secure nor increase collection beyond what is possible with confidential systems.

Introduction In this episode of VAT Talks we discuss VAT with Raul Zambrano (Director of Technical Assistance and Technology of the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations at CIAT) and Vinicius Pimentel de Freitas (Tax Auditor of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and Coordinator of the Brazilian Electronic Invoice programs). Both are experts regarding the various implementations of e-invoicing/real-time reporting in Latin America. Raul and Vinicius first of all emphasise that e-invoicing systems in Latin America “require sending information directly to the tax administration”.