Towards a Modern EU VAT System: Associating VIVAT and Electronic Invoicing

In spite of all traditional anti-fraud measures adopted these last few years, the carousel fraud is still there. Moreover, the risk is becoming high for honest traders of being involved in such fraudulent transactions and the consequences can be very damaging for them.

Time has come to reconsider solutions that would eliminate what makes such fraud so attractive: breaking the VAT chain by zero-rating intra-EU supplies of goods (i.e., the possibility to buy goods without immediate payment of VAT). Viable Integrated VAT (VIVAT) is such a solution. Under that proposal, a common rate of VAT would apply to all Business-to-business (B2B) transactions within the EU, while Member States would retain the power to fix their VAT rate for final consumption. At the same time, it would offer a general remedy by eliminating differences of treatment of domestic and intra-EU transactions.

But VIVAT is not enough to ensure the control of the chain of taxation and deduction, notably in cross-border trade. It should be completed by an extensive use of electronic invoicing and the reorganization of VAT administration and control on that base. This article explores such an approach to a modern VAT system for a trade-integrated area like the EU.