"Amsterdam startup wants to close the VAT gap with blockchain technology"

Het Financieele Dagblad October 22 2017

"Amsterdam startup wants to close the VAT gap with blockchain technology"

Het Financieele Dagblad

October 22 2017

New Cryptographic Building blocks

New Cryptographic Building blocks

Combat VAT fraud, reduce the administrative burden of companies and increase compliance.

We are building the world’s first blockchain based, real-time, decentralised, and most importantly confidential triple entry accounting system. The registration of accounting entries in an external ledger allows for many applications and improvements in compliance. For the first time, Missing Trader Intra Community Fraud can be tackled without collecting excessive taxpayer data. Only by focusing on privacy from the start and by maintaining a privacy-by-design philosophy can we create an encrypted and truly safe system.

The relative ease with which various forms of invoicing fraud can occur today has led to a VAT-gap of 137 billion EUR per year in the EU alone, of which an estimated 50 billion is due to Missing Trader Intra Community Fraud. As seen in the animation, companies disappear before they pay their collected VAT to the Tax Authority.

Combatting VAT fraud, reduce the administrative burden of companies and increase compliance.

We are building the world’s first blockchain based, real-time, decentralised, and most importantly confidential triple entry accounting system. The registration of accounting entries in an external ledger allows for many applications and improvements in compliance. For the first time, Missing Trader Intra Community Fraud can be eliminated without collecting excessive taxpayer data. Only by focusing on privacy from the start and by maintaining a privacy-by-design philosophy can we create an encrypted and truly safe system.

The problem

The relative ease with which various forms of invoicing fraud can occur today has lead to a VAT-gap of 151.5 billion EUR per year in the EU alone, of which an estimated 50 billion is due to Missing Trader Intra Community Fraud. As seen in the animation, companies disappear before they pay their collected VAT to the Tax Authority.

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

Some systems try to only combat the VAT fraud aspect by central clearing of invoices. Such central systems are not only vulnerable, but also do not ensure confidentiality nor deliver incentives for companies to participate.

Costly and inefficient after the fact audits, get replaced with real-time risk checks. Once in place, this system will not only eliminate the need for VAT-reporting facilitates but it will also enable other applications based on the data. Using new cryptographic signature schemes, transaction amounts, origins and destinations can be masked effectively to provide confidentiality.

To allow for a broad participation and acceptance, our software will be open source and transparent, which will allow all participants to verify how data is shared.

Some systems try to only combat the VAT fraud aspect by central clearing of invoices. Such central systems are not only vulnerable, but also do not ensure confidentiality nor deliver incentives for companies to participate.

Costly and inefficient after the fact audits, get replaced with real-time risk checks. Once in place, this system will not only eliminate the need for VAT-reporting but also allow to facilitate  other applications based on the data. Using new cryptographic signature schemes, transaction amounts, origins and destinations can be masked effectively to provide confidentiality.

To allow for a broad participation and acceptance, our software will be open source and transparent, which will allow all participants to verify how data is shared.

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