Backing for EU’s VAT in the Digital Age reforms; sceptical on need for mandatory domestic e-invoicing regime
The Dutch Secretary of Finance has confirmed conditional support of the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age – reforms designed to reduce the need for foreign VAT registrations and adoption of digital transaction reporting on pan-EU reporting.
In terms of the Digital Reporting Requirements pillar, the Dutch are supportive of the e-invoicing and intra-community supply transactional reporting only if eases the administrative burden for businesses in the long term and improves fraud prevention.
However, the Netherlands is unlikely to take up the option to impose any form of B2B or B2C e-invoicing or Continuous Transaction Controls itself. The low level of domestic VAT fraud, €1.7 billion or less than 3% of VAT revenues, is sited as the major reason for not requiring the investment. This contrasts to neighbouring Germany and Belgium which have recently announced plans to introduce mandatory B2B e-invoicing from January 2025 and July 2024, respectively.
The Netherlands introduced B2G from January 2017 in accordance with EU Directive no. 2014/55/EU
