KPMG's indirect tax team sets out the EU's VAT in the Digital Age package in three pillars: structured e-invoicing with digital reporting for cross-border B2B trade, new VAT rules for platforms in accommodation and passenger transport, and a single VAT registration for traders operating across member states, phased in over the coming years. Since the piece appeared, the package has been formally adopted, so the timelines it sketches have become real planning dates.
Our take for clients: do not treat this as an IT purchase. The companies that struggle buy a converter first and discover later that master data, VAT logic and approval flows were never designed for structured invoices. Start with an inventory of invoice flows per country and system, clean up customer and supplier data, and only then choose tooling. Handled that way, the mandate becomes a reason to remove manual retyping from accounts payable and receivable altogether. We help clients fold e-invoicing into the bookkeeping itself, so compliance and automation arrive in the same project.