Digitisation is creeping up on the consciousness of country governments globally, and how this digitisation practically manifests itself takes manifold forms. This is not just limited to e-invoicing mandates - although this is a critical part of it. This renewed drive is also intruding on the way countries process changing tax rates, as well as their process of reporting VAT-related data to governments.

Hungary is not immune to this and has launched a new system referred to as eVAT, which aims to alleviate some of the more cumbersome features associated with VAT returns, by pre-populating its contents. The pre-population will be facilitated by transaction level data reported by taxpayers. The service also will offer validations, as well as the opportunity for taxpayers to review their VAT return. In principle, this should result in a faster time for completion of the VAT return cycle process.

To suit each category of taxpayer, small taxpayers can access an online portal to this effect, and larger taxpayers can make use of an electronic form via a dedicated API. Much like the underlying motivations behind e-invoicing, the initiative is hoped to result in a simplification of the VAT process, VAT gap reduction and reduced tax fraud, thus contributing to a wider set of VAT-related objectives.