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What is a tax engine for VAT / GST determination? Why VAT Calculator is the best in the market

Tax Engines are essential as tax authorities move to e-invoicing & live reporting. And they no longer need to be expensive or excruciating to implement

A ‘tax engine’ is a specialist software application used to calculate the correct VAT, GST or sales tax on a transaction.  At VAT Calc, we have built the best tax engine in the market, VAT Calculator. Why the best? It’s the only one built on the provisions from national VAT laws, which means no adding and maintaining of custom rules to the out-of-the-box content. Plus – get ready for the killer feature – it’s built on the same single-platform as our global VAT Filer, so all your accurate tax transactions seamlessly feed into the right box in the right VAT return saving significant time during filing cycles.

Why have a separate tax engine?

VAT or GST calculations are complex, especially when transactions are cross-border. Most ERPs or other systems that need to capture tax calculations for invoicing and ledgers aren’t up to the job. Tax engines work to support accounting, ERP, e-commerce, invoicing and point-of-sale systems to ensure complex indirect tax calculations involving several pieces of information are done properly and efficiently. They can be fully integrated into these systems, typically via an API (Application Programming Interface).

A dedicated tax engine ensures:  

  • Accurate determination to avoid risk of invoice disputes with customers and ensure no input VAT deductibility issues with tax authorities
  • Up-to-date tax rates are applied – With countries applying special rates on certain items during COVID and EU Member States soon to be afforded greater freedoms for setting rates, an engine ensures rate changes are not missed by internal tax and finance teams.
  • When tax must be determined in a live situation – for online transactions or e-invoices – it’s vital a dedicated application is there to ensure no failed sales

If you need a SAP tax engine, or for other ERP’s, your search is over. VAT Calc has done away with use cases supported by custom rules, and built the rules from the legislation up so all transactions come covered making implementations much less time consuming and costly. Plus, we don’t require an invasive integration to overwrite tax codes -instead our VATCalc in SAP Cockpit audits and enables on-screen adjustments within your SAP on-premises or cloud ER>

4 reasons VAT Calculator is the best tax engine in the market

VAT Calc's tax engine - operating in days; saving you huge costs and risks on tax liabilities
1. VAT Calculator is the only global tax engine built on tax laws as opposed to custom rules Instant implementations for any business! You won’t need expensive consultants spending months adapting it with their fiddly custom rules that require ongoing maintenance. We already have all the complexity of any use case ready-to-go out of the box: triangulation; 2021 EU ecommerce reforms; gig & sharing economy taxes; customs and warehouse exemptions and the rest of your wish list. In fact, a VAT Calc implementation is mostly just building to our API - days instead of months!
2. Using VAT Script, you take complete, real-time control of the rules Whilst our engine is built from the national tax laws up, you may have requirements that are nuanced to your business. No problem: with VAT Script, our proprietary tax programming interface, which you can be trained-up in minutes, allows you to adapt the assumptions to your business model or interpretation of tax rules. No need to call IT and ERP teams or pay for costly outside help for punishingly lengthy code change-cycles.
3. So good, we built two You may have already done the tax calculations on large batches of transactions, but you need it verified. Our VAT Auditor application will instantly verify the VAT / GST calculations of any size file, and return line-by-line errors and suggested changes. No complex or expensive integrations. You can make the amendments live in the system, and, if you wish, commit to our VAT Filer.
4. It’s on the same single-platform as our VAT Filer returns service Not convinced yet? This is the killer feature. Your calculations are immediately reported in the right return and box without any further connections, integrations, or fiddly reconciliations. That's hundreds of hours and thousands in consulting and software costs saved. VAT Calc is the only tax engine with calculations AND returns on the same application.

EU Continuous Transaction Controls – VAT in the Digital Age

VAT Calc’s has been developed with the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age reforms in full focus, including Continuous Transactions Controls Continuous Transaction Controls (CTC) agility to live calculate and report invoice data.

 

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