In October, Christiaan van der Valk, Sovos vice president of strategy, will speak about the emergence of real-time VAT controls on business transactions at the CIAT/IOTA Technical Conference in Lisbon.
The presentation will focus on lessons learned from ongoing work on these topics in groups at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the European E-Invoicing Service Providers’ Association (EESPA).
Van der Valk’s observations will focus on the need for:
- Promoting a better understanding of the enterprise software and Cloud services ecosystem: many laws dealing with digital tax do not sufficiently consider the differences among modern software and services categories
- Maintaining a balance between the legitimate interests of governments and businesses
- Cooperation between regulators and business practitioners
- Avoiding contradictions or conflicts among obligations put on businesses across geographies and sectors, as well as ensuring consistency among legal, process and technical requirements
- Interoperability among jurisdictions from a business, legal, technical and operational perspective
- Harmonization or – better – uniformity of requirements and technical specifications for real-time controls
- Clear and exhaustive guidance on how to comply with real-time control requirements
- Realistic deadlines, considering the compliance capabilities of different taxpayer categories, as well as the availability and cost of technology solutions for affected taxpayers
- No or minimum trade impact as a result of VAT controls
Tax on two continents
The Latin American Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations (CIAT) and the European Inter European Organization of Tax Administrations (IOTA) promote cooperation and technological evolution among national tax administrations, including the Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority (AT), Portugal’s equivalent to the IRS, which will also sponsor the conference. This will be the the first joint conference involving CIAT and IOTA.
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