Hello everyone, welcome to the PWC TaxBite podcast series.

My name is Peter and today we will talk about indirect taxes and e-invoicing.

And you could wonder why a topic like this on a podcast series that is predominantly looking at more direct tax aspects.

Well, let me explain you that.

Over the past months, I have been more and more cooperating with my colleagues that are

invited here also to the virtual recording studio on information that tax authorities get.

And in this podcast series, we have been talking about DAC 6, DAC 7, joint audits, and all

the other stuff that develops around that.

When I saw a publication of the European Commission, it triggered me.

And I called Ellen and Sven, who I have with me here today, to talk about e-invoicing and what is happening in the

indirect tax world. So let me introduce my guests, first of all, Alan Kortfried.

Alan is leading or global e-invoicing and e-reporting Center of Excellence in Belgium. And Sven

Genens, Sven is part of the same center of

excellence and very much aware of the developments in Europe. So let's kick it off and Alan I want to

start with you perhaps as an introduction can you share a bit with the audience what's what's ongoing

in the indirect tax world. Yeah absolutely absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Pytish. Hello, everyone.

So indeed, what is happening from an indirect tax perspective,

you will not be surprised that one of the main drivers behind the many initiatives

that we see for governments collecting more and more information

about businesses is the search for money. The way to reduce the so-called VAT gap in Europe,

the VAT gap, meaning the differences between what member states, the VAT amounts that member

states should collect versus what they actually collect.

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