Many people in Europe might be in favor of value-added tax (VAT) having no future but unfortunately it’s here to stay. So I wondered if XBRL figured in this future and went to a 2010 EU green paper On the future of VAT to find out. I discovered that apparently XBRL does not figure in the future despite this very clear rationale for it to be considered in section 2.4 of the paper:
The EU’s VAT system has evolved slowly compared with the technological and economic environment, which has seen rapidly changing business models, increasing use of new technologies, the growing importance of services – now accounting for about 70% of economic activity – and globalisation of the economy generally.
However, these technological changes may as well offer the possibility of new and alternative ways of collecting VAT to reduce burdens on business and VAT losses. The existing collection model has remained substantially unchanged since the introduction of VAT.
While XBRL is considered suitable for filing relatively complex, detail tagged 10-Qs and Ks in the USA and corporation tax returns in the UK, it’s apparently not being considered for filing comparatively simple quarterly VAT returns in the EU. Bizarre. Even this response to the paper from the tax faculty of the ICAEW does not even mention XBRL.
Tags: VAT
