VATupdate Newsletter week 40 2025

HOPE

Scientists once conducted an experiment with rats to study endurance. They placed the rats in a pool of water to see how long they could tread before giving up. On average, it took about 15 minutes before they sank.

Then, the researchers changed one small thing. Just before the rats were about to give up, they picked them out of the water, gave them a short rest, and then put them back in.

This time, something extraordinary happened.

The rats didn’t swim for another 15 minutes.

They didn’t last an hour.

They swam for 60 hours.

That’s not a typo — hours, not minutes.

The scientists concluded that the rats survived because they believed they would eventually be rescued. Hope gave them the strength to push their bodies far beyond what they thought possible.

And it makes you wonder — if hope can keep a rat afloat for 60 hours, what can belief do for us?

When life feels like an endless pool of VAT returns, reconciliation differences, and changing rules, it’s easy to feel like sinking. But remember: you’ve made it through tougher audits, you’ve survived year-end closings, and you’ve explained the “reverse charge” mechanism to the same client more than once. You can do this.

Hope isn’t just wishful thinking: it’s energy. It’s endurance. It’s what keeps you swimming when logic says you should have sunk long ago.

And maybe, just maybe, the same applies to VAT systems themselves. Because even after decades of reforms, countless ECJ cases, and the occasional ViDA-shaped wave, the VAT framework keeps going. It treads water through every policy change and survives every political storm. Powered, perhaps, by the hope that one day everything will finally align perfectly.

So keep the faith. Keep filing. Keep swimming.

Because in VAT — as in life — it’s the hope that keeps us afloat.

For more stories that keep your VAT spirit swimming, visit VATupdate.com

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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