Tax administrations’ adoption of new technologies to protect and ensure tax revenues

It’s clearly otiose to state that there is no domain of human activity which is not impacted in some manner by the revolution caused by technology, the digitalisation of information and data and the internet. Tax administrations are not exempt from this trend and whilst the use by administrations of technology and their capacity to handle and process huge volumes of data varies widely across the globe, they are clearly using these new tools and techniques to improve performance and make their audits and controls more effective. The objective is clear—to be able to react in real time—or at least to shorten reaction times to protect and ensure tax revenues. In this article the author explores how administrations are using technology, their ability to handle large volumes of data and, through the use of risk assessment techniques, have put an end to certain VAT refund frauds which give rise to VAT carrousel type scams (although, due to the changing nature of such frauds, more cross matching of data is essential). © Europäische Rechtsakademie (ERA) 2019.