The platform is the first key central repository for EU VAT information for businesses to use themselves
VATGlobal, the leaders in outsourced international VAT and tax solutions, has today launched its new knowledge platform, vlearn. Drafted by VATGlobal’s internal team of chartered tax and accountancy professionals, vlearn aims to provide businesses with some of the most commonly sought-after local country rules for VAT issues across Europe. Currently live and accessible online, the service is a one-stop service for users to find information to help navigate the intricacies of VAT in local EU countries.
Developed by a highly experienced team, with a combined 45 years of VAT experience spanning advisory through to compliance and reporting, vlearn aims to provide clear and precise European VAT knowledge for businesses of all sizes. The content was put through a rigorous editing and filing process, to ensure that it is as clear as possible for users, whether small businesses or major organisations with dedicated in-house tax teams. The portal covers specific themes and principles on VAT, all the way through to the country level. The content is then stratified, from clear definitions and entry-level descriptors through to expert-level content into the minutiae of individual VAT regimes, importantly enabling the users to apply this on a day to day basis in the business with the help of application tools provided alongside.
The product has been developed over a number of years by VATGlobal. Regularly, organisations need to use several different solutions and resource bases to try and make sense of the VAT rules, with many of these being developed as a separate entity to the core tax business – and crucially, often with the content not developed by the core tax team.
As Gareth Kobrin, CEO of VATGlobal explains: “vlearn was born out of our internal teams’ frustration with a lack of resource in the market for businesses to use themselves for the day to day queries that repeatedly came up; For businesses, it’s a huge time-sink and areas of concern, so we developed our own resource, using the knowledge of our vastly experienced team, and importantly the practical experience. Along with giving clear information to users, vlearn is also vastly cost effective to quickly clear up day to day VAT queries versus the resulting fines and penalties for getting VAT wrong.”
vlearn is launched at a time of technological upheaval within the world of tax. The digitisation of VAT processes continues apace across Europe, drawing from the initial work done in Latin America. This has led to some developed economies such as Italy implementing real-time controls on invoicing and vastly shortening the window that businesses have to become compliant – or to rectify previous mistakes. France has also begun to draw up plans to introduce a similar transition to that of Italy.
Aspects of global uncertainty mean that international regulation may change swiftly, heightening the need for those in charge of tax compliance to be able to access accurate information in a timely manner.
The product has been tested by several existing VATGlobal customers over a number of months to ensure vlearn, both with the website layout and its content, retained a focus on clear user experience and clarity. Feedback proved using VATGlobal’s vlearn solution, even in beta, saw a real reduction in the time it takes to find and apply the right information to ensure compliance and best practice for customers.
vlearn also fits into the existing suite of technologies from VATGlobal, complimenting vflow and vfile to provide end-to-end support for businesses of all sizes, and employees of all levels of tax experience.
