Friday the 13th and five VAT superstitions
Black cats and ladders are harmless. These five VAT superstitions are not. A light Friday read on beliefs that quietly cost finance teams time.
It is Friday the 13th.
Somewhere a person is carefully walking around a ladder instead of under it. Someone else is giving a black cat a suspicious look. Harmless habits, mostly.
Finance has its own superstitions. They are less visible than a black cat, but they can be a lot more expensive. Here are five we hear more often than you might think.
① "if the return is filed, the data is correct"
Filing proves one thing: the return reached the tax authority on time. It says nothing about whether the figures behind it tie back to your general ledger, your receivables and your payables. A return can be perfectly on time and still rest on a difference nobody explained.
② "our system is compliant"
No system is compliant on its own. Compliance comes from the combination of the right setup, the right master data, the right process and people who check the outcome. Software can make that much easier and much more visible. It cannot take over the responsibility.
③ "e invoicing will solve our VAT problems"
Electronic invoicing is a big step forward. Structured data, fewer typing errors, faster processing. But an electronic invoice with the wrong VAT treatment is still the wrong VAT treatment, just delivered faster. E Invoicing, e Reporting, VAT returns and audit files all depend on the same transactions being right.
④ "the data belongs to IT"
IT owns the system. That is not the same as owning the content. The VAT number on a customer record, the tax code on an invoice line, the decision whether a supply is exempt: those are business decisions. When ownership is unclear, problems travel around the building until the deadline arrives.
⑤ "we will fix it at year end"
The year end clean up is a much loved tradition. It is also getting harder to keep. Poland, France and Belgium already move transaction data closer to the moment of invoicing, and Germany follows from 2027. When the tax authority sees your data almost as quickly as you do, "later" soon becomes "too late".
No luck required
The good news: none of this needs a lucky charm. It needs a habit. Reconcile regularly, fix differences at the source in Oracle, and make it clear who owns which part of the data.
That last point is what we explore all month. Next week: what happens when Tax, Finance and IT finally sit down together to agree who does what.
Have a great weekend. No ladders needed. 😉