12th Edition of Annual Trends Report Puts Spotlight on Current and Near-term Legal Requirements Across Regions and VAT Compliance Domains
BOSTON, December 16, 2020 – Global tax software leader Sovos today released its report on global value-added tax (VAT) mandates and compliance. The report, “VAT Trends: Toward Continuous Transaction Controls” provides a comprehensive look at the regulatory landscape as governments across the globe are enacting complex new policies to enforce VAT mandates, obtain unprecedented insight into economic data and close revenue gaps.
The focus of this year’s edition is on four emerging megatrends with potential to drive change in the way organizations approach regulatory reporting and manage compliance. Authored by a team of international tax compliance experts, the Sovos Trends Report includes extensive recommendations on how companies can prepare for and thrive through these changes.
Previewing the mega-trends:
- Continuous Transaction Controls (CTCs) – Countries with existing CTC regimes are seeing improvements in revenue collection and economic transparency. Now, other countries in Europe, Asia and Africa are moving away from post-audit regulation to adoption of these CTC-inspired approaches.
- A shift toward destination taxability for certain cross-border transactions – Cross-border services have historically often escaped VAT collection in the country of the consumer. Due to a large increase of cross-border trade in low-value goods and digital services over the past decade, administrations are taking significant measures to tax such supplies in the country of consumption or destination.
- Aggregator liability – With the increase of tax reporting or e-invoicing obligations across different taxpayer categories, tax administrations are increasingly looking for ways to concentrate tax reporting liability in platforms that naturally aggregate large numbers of transactions already. Ecommerce marketplaces and business transaction management cloud vendors will increasingly be on the hook for sending data from companies on their networks to the government, potentially even inheriting liability for paying their taxes.
- E-accounting and e-assessment – Combining CTCs with obligations to synchronize entire accounting ledgers makes onsite audit necessary only in cases showing major anomalies across these rich data sources. Over time, the objective is for VAT returns and other tax reports to be prefilled by the tax administration based on taxpayers’ own, strongly authenticated source system data.
“Continuous transaction controls have emerged as the primary concern for multinational companies looking to ensure compliance despite growing diversity in VAT enforcement approaches,” said Christiaan van der Valk, lead author of the report and vice president of strategy at Sovos. “Tax authorities are steadfast in their commitment to closing the VAT gap and will use all tools at their disposal to collect revenue owed. This holds especially true for the aftermath of COVID-19, when governments are expected to face unprecedented budget shortfalls.”
Additionally, this 12th edition of the “VAT Trends: Toward Continuous Transaction Controls” includes a major review of the country and regional requirement profiles. These profiles provide a snapshot of current and near-term planned legal requirements across the different VAT compliance domains. The report also examines how governments have embraced digital transformation in order to speed revenue collection, decrease fraud and narrow VAT gaps. This digitization enables regimes to increase time to enforcement and enact stricter protocols, and consequently, businesses are forced to react with more stringent processes of their own to remain compliant.
“Sovos’ team of global regulatory experts exists to help businesses respond to the digitization of tax. We focus our efforts on simplifying the multiple layers of complexity, so customers can focus on growing their businesses,” said Filippa Jörnstedt, manager, regulatory analysis and design, Sovos. “As part of our mission to Solve Tax for Good, we provide the information organizations need to address tax challenges and ensure compliance with tax laws, everywhere they operate.”
To download your complimentary copy of the report, click here.
About Sovos
Sovos was built to solve the complexities of the digital transformation of tax, with complete, connected offerings for tax determination, continuous transaction control compliance, tax reporting and more. The company supports more than 8,000 customers, including half of the Fortune 500, operating in over 70 countries. Its SaaS products and proprietary Sovos S1 Platform integrate with a wide variety of business applications and government compliance processes. Sovos has employees throughout North America, Latin America and Europe, and is owned by Hg and TA Associates. For more information visit http://www.sovos.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
