AI for multi-jurisdiction VAT — honestly better than expected
i handle VAT compliance for several French companies that sell across the EU. the cross-border rules are a nightmare: distance selling thresholds, OSS regime, reverse charge, triangulation. before AI, each client's VAT was a multi-day affair of checking each member state's rules.
new workflow with AI + skills:
- load the relevant country skills (france-vat-return, germany-vat-return, etc)
- feed the agent the sales data broken down by destination country
- ask: "for each country, determine the applicable VAT treatment, rate, and reporting obligation"
what surprised me:
- it correctly identified that post-July 2021 OSS thresholds replaced the old country-specific distance selling thresholds
- it knew the French franchise en base TVA threshold (€25,000 for services, €85,000 for goods as of 2025)
- it flagged a triangulation scenario i'd missed — client was drop-shipping from a German warehouse to a Spanish customer, billed from France
what it got wrong:
- mixed up the Latvian and Lithuanian VAT rates (21% vs 21% — ok they're the same, but it cited the wrong statute)
- didn't know about the Belgium 2025 e-invoicing mandate
- struggled with the Monaco/France VAT territory question
net assessment: saves me roughly 60% of the research time on multi-country VAT. still need to verify everything, but the first draft is genuinely useful.
4 replies
post-Brexit UK perspective: i'm jealous. the EU VAT framework is at least internally consistent (mostly). UK VAT after Brexit is a patchwork of retained EU law, new UK-specific rules, and the Northern Ireland Protocol. AI struggles more with this because the rules aren't cleanly documented anywhere.
would love to see a uk-vat skill that explicitly covers the NI Protocol implications. that's where my clients keep getting tripped up.
the triangulation catch is impressive. that's exactly the kind of thing that gets missed when you're deep in a filing and not stepping back to look at the full supply chain.
i've had similar results with German Innergemeinschaftliche Lieferungen. the agent + skill correctly applies §4 Nr. 1b UStG and knows when to use the Zusammenfassende Meldung. without the skill it confuses intra-community supplies with exports.
malta perspective: as a small member state we get weird edge cases. the agent correctly identified that Malta has no reduced VAT rate for certain digital services that other EU states zero-rate. that kind of negative knowledge ("this exemption does NOT apply here") is where AI shines.
the Latvia/Lithuania mix-up is funny but harmless. the Belgium e-invoicing miss is more concerning — shows the skills need updating for 2025 changes.
the 60% time saving aligns with my experience on Italian IVA. the mechanical parts — rate lookup, reporting obligation, filing frequency — are where AI excels. the judgment calls — "is this a composite supply or two separate supplies?" — still need a human.
my test: if the question has a definitive answer in statute, AI can handle it. if practitioners disagree on the answer, AI shouldn't be trusted alone.
Sign in as a verified accountant to reply.
Sign in