Blog

Trends: What’s Driving the Global VAT Landscape?

We recently launched the 13th Edition of our annual Trends report, the industry’s most comprehensive study of global VAT mandates and compliance controls. Trends provides a comprehensive look at the world’s regulatory landscape highlighting how governments across the world are enacting complex new policies and controls to close tax gaps and collect the revenue owed. […]

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Determining Location of Risk: Health Insurance

Identifying the Location of Risk in the case of health insurance can be a tricky subject, but it’s also crucial to get it right. A failure to do so could lead to under-declared tax liabilities in a particular territory and the potential for penalties to be applied once these deficits are identified and belatedly settled. […]

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Saudi Arabia: ZATCA Announces Revised Penalties for Non-compliance with VAT and E-invoicing Rules

On 30 January 2022, the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) published an announcement on its official web page concerning penalties for violations of VAT rules, and it is currently only available in Arabic. As part of the announcement, the previous fines have been amended, ushering in a more cooperative and educational approach for penalizing […]

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Turkey Expands Scope of E-Documents

Towards the end of 2021, the tax authority in Turkey published a draft communique that expands the scope of e-documents in Turkey. After minor revisions, the draft communique was enacted and published in the Official Gazette on 22 January 2022. Let’s take a closer look at the changes in the scope of Turkish e-documents. Scope […]

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China Introduces Fully Digitized E-Invoice with New Pilot Program

The Tax Bureaus of Shanghai, Guangdong Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have all issued announcements stating they intend to carry out a new pilot program for selected taxpayers based in some areas of the provinces. The pilot program will involve adopting a new e-invoice type, known as a fully digitized e-invoice. Introduction of a […]

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France Implements Mandatory Postponed Accounting on Imports

As a result of the 2020 Finance Law implementation, which transfers the management and collection of import VAT from customs to the Public Finances Directorate General (DGFIP), France has implemented mandatory reporting of import VAT in the VAT return instead of having the option to pay through customs as is typically the process. This change […]

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Latest Updates in Romania: B2B E-invoicing Mandate for High-risk Products and E-transport System

With the most significant VAT gap in the EU (34.9% in 2019), Romania has been moving towards introducing a continuous transaction control (CTC) regime to improve and strengthen VAT collection while combating tax evasion. The main features of this new e-invoicing system, e-Factura, have been described in an earlier blog post. Today, we’ll take a […]

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IPT Compliance in Slovakia

A new year has arrived, marking an excellent opportunity to continue our blog series addressing Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) compliance in different countries. You can read other blogs in this series by visiting our Denmark, Finland, and the UK entries or by downloading Sovos’ Guide on IPT Compliance. Written by our team of IPT and […]

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Brexit One Year On – What Do We Know?

The Northern Ireland Protocol regarding goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland continues to cause problems, leading to calls to suspend it via Article 16. But at the same time, some NI politicians are looking to capitalise on the possibility of inward investment by companies that can benefit from being in both the UK […]

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Eastern Europe: The Rise of CTCs

In a blog post earlier this year, we wrote about how several Eastern European countries have started implementing continuous transaction controls (CTC) to combat tax fraud and reduce the VAT gap. However, it’s been an eventful year with many new developments in the region, so let’s take a closer look at some of the changes on the […]

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Understanding IOSS – EU E-Commerce VAT Package FAQs

The EU e-commerce VAT package was introduced in July 2021. The new schemes, One Stop Shop (OSS) and Import One Stop Shop (IOSS) bring significant changes to VAT treatment and reporting mechanisms for sales to private individuals in the EU. In the last of our series of FAQ blogs, we answer some of the more […]

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How to Manage VAT Changes

In our previous blog, we completed the compliance cycle with tax authority audits. However, that’s not the end of the challenges businesses face in remaining compliant in the countries where they have VAT obligations. VAT rules and regulations change as do a business’s supply chains – these need to be carefully reviewed and appropriate action […]

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How Union One Stop Shop Impacts Other Declarations

The EU e-Commerce VAT Package is nearly six months old and businesses should have submitted their first Union One Stop Shop (OSS) return by the end of October 2021. Union OSS provides a welcome simplification to the requirement to be registered for VAT in multiple Member States when making intra-EU B2C supplies of goods and […]

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Poland: Insurance Ombudsman Contribution

Update: 12 January 2024 by Edit Buliczka Upcoming Submission Deadline for Polish Claims Report The Polish Financial Ombudsman Office (Rzecznik Finansowy), like other regulatory bodies such as the Italian IVASS, requires insurance companies to submit various reports about their activities. One of these is the Claims Report. According to the Act on the Consideration of […]

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How to Prepare for a VAT Audit

In our previous blog, we looked at the challenges that businesses face in submitting VAT and other declarations on an ongoing basis. However, the compliance cycle doesn’t end there as tax authorities will carry out audits for a variety of reasons to validate declarations. Why do tax authorities carry out audits? When VAT returns consisted […]

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Norway – 2022 Digital VAT Return Coming Soon

As we inch closer to the implementation date of 1 January 2022 for Norway’s new digitized VAT return, let’s take a second look at the details. Norway announced its intentions to introduce a new digital VAT return in late 2020, with an intended launch date of 1 January 2022. With this update comes the removal […]

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Romania E-Invoicing Mandates and Updates

Update: 3 January 2024 by Inês Carvalho Romania Issues Last-Minute Amendments to B2B E-invoicing Regulations After the implementation of Romania’s new B2B e-invoicing regulations, effective January 2024, the country introduced Government Emergency Order No. 115/2023 with last-minute amendments. We can summarise the key amendments from the new legislation in three categories: 1. Exemptions from the […]

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Germany: Mandatory B2B E-Invoicing

Update: 25 June 2024 by Dilara İnal Ministry Publishes Draft Guideline on B2B E-Invoicing The German Ministry of Finance (MoF) released a draft guideline on 13 June 2024, detailing the upcoming B2B e-invoicing mandate which will roll out on 1 January 2025. Although the current law only obliges taxpayers to issue and receive e-invoices for […]

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