VATupdate Newsletter Week 44 2023

Alexandria

In the Middle-Ages, people often went for advice to an old, wise woman in the forest. She showed the people how to approach, perform and accomplish day-to-day tasks more efficiently and more easily. This woman was also called a ‘life-hag’.

We like live-hacks. Whether it’s how to bake a cake, or how to easily remove a rusty screw from a wall: there’s always a trick that you can find on the Interweb. The Internet has become our collaborate memory, containing all the information that anyone has ever known. Like the Library of Alexandria, containing all the knowledge in the world.

Unfortunately, it also contains a lot of rubbish. And it’s also a large problem that anyone has access to it. The latter resulting in people drawing conclusions and making connections that are completely ridiculous, which you would know if you would take the time to check the real facts.

The risk is that the media are also copying these conclusions and opinions. Journalists should always be checking if a source is trustworthy, and if the facts presented are valid and correct. Unfortunately, that’s not always done.

One of the reasons for this is that the Internet, our Library of Alexandria, is growing so big that it’s impossible to check and countercheck all facts, opinions and conclusions. There’s simply too much information. It’s becoming so big that people stop understanding each other. It’s becoming our Tower of Babylon.

For us, the VATupdate Team, it’s also sometimes difficult to continuously check all the sources and news items that we use and post. Technology is helping us, as you may have seen from the small text below some of our posts. Artificial Intelligence is helping us scan, summarise and compare sources and news.

Nevertheless, it’s always important to cross-check the facts and sources that you use when you’re dealing with VAT rules. We help you in finding all the news that is posted relating to VAT. And we try to identify hot topics, trends and developments. But it’s up to you, our readers, to come-up with that perfect solution, conclusion or opinion on the VAT position of the business you’re dealing with.

If you have any comments, questions, or ideas that you want to share with us, please send us an email at [email protected] or leave a comment under the posts of this newsletter on LinkedIn.

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