This blog was last updated on February 22, 2016
Last week we had the pleasure of hosting our first exclusive VAT technology event.
The topic for the event was the rise of e-audits in relation to VAT and how to tackle the challenges with technology. The increasing complexity of the VAT environment, and the constant technological development on the tax administration side to overcome staff shortages, will soon force companies to adjust their manual processes to keep up with newly set requirements. The audit defense of the future means being well prepared to have the processes in place today that allow you to do more with less resources.
Industry Insiders Talk About the Rise of E-Audits and Trends to Achieve Full Compliance
Daniel Kroesen, our guest speaker from Ernst & Young, shared his insights on how tax authorities conduct e-audits and the trends of e-audits in various European countries. Relevant statistics were presented and coupled with his experiences how businesses approach and manage VAT in this IT environment. He also offered insights how to prepare your department when it comes to compliance with e-audits and e-invoices as well as his personal experiences with the e-audits of his clients.
Casper Winkelman, our General Manager of the Sovos VAT solution, delivered a hands-on presentation how to tackle e-audit VAT challenges with technology. Casper highlighted how the specific challenges most VAT managers face today will become serious business issues when e-audits have been adapted across Europe more widely. To ensure full compliance with those new developments, companies will be required to hire additional, highly skilled resources that will present a substantial cost to the department or find a better process led by technology to identify errors pro-actively with fully automated data analytics.
The Demise of Simply Relying on Spreadsheets as a Viable VAT Analysis Tool, Technology is the Answer to Identify and Prevent Non-Compliance
While so far a lot of companies are still relying on manual spot checks in Excel and their ERP system to ensure that errors can be avoided, tax administrations are getting more efficient and smarter to ensure compliance in Europe. They are increasingly moving towards technology to help them identify acts of non-compliance. Being required to disclose more and more detailed transactional data exposes organisations to significant risks if they have not performed in-depth VAT analytics. Excel will soon become unsustainable as a way for VAT analysis or most important as a document for (e-) audits, as the inefficiencies will put users under even more time pressure to deliver accurate results that are fully transparent to the tax authorities.
We would also like to use this as an opportunity to thank all attendees for making this a great event and our special regards to Daniel Kroesen, our guest speaker for sharing his expertise on the subject. We are looking forward to seeing all of you again at our next VAT automation expert event!
To learn more our future events, please sign up for our exclusive tax community today. As a member, Sovos offers a monthly newsletter to keep you up-to-date with any regulatory VAT changes in the European Union and beyond, as well as relevant articles and other informative collateral around VAT compliance and automation.
