Public tax authorities in different countries
Many governments around the world now recognise digitalisation as an effective mechanism to:
increase efficiency in business processes between trading partners;
· combat the loss of indirect tax revenues due to maladministration, fraud and evasion by businesses;
· increase efficiency for both tax authorities and businesses in the collection of tax.
Already, governments in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand utilise the Peppol Business Interoperability Specifications (BIS) and the Peppol eDelivery Network to receive millions of electronic invoices from businesses (B2G), as well as enabling businesses to invoice each other (B2B). This already enables considerable benefits for the users. However, the Peppol approach also provides a solid foundation for governments to implement digital controls to simultaneously increase tax revenues and further increase business efficiency.
The indirect tax gap
Lost tax revenue is a significant problem for governments around the world, for example, the most recent report from the European Commission, published in 2017, estimated the EU VAT gap at €137bn.
