SAF-T vs E-Invoicing & E-Reporting: Key Differences in the Evolving Digital VAT Landscape

• SAF-T provides a holistic, periodic, and audit-focused view of a business’s accounting data, enabling tax authorities to reconcile VAT returns and ensure end-to-end VAT integrity.
• E-invoicing and e-reporting are transaction-level, real-time regimes focused on capturing VAT-relevant data at or near the point of supply for immediate tax authority visibility and fraud prevention.
• SAF-T is used for audit and post-filing control, even where real-time e-invoicing exists, and is not being fully replaced by newer systems.
• The main distinction: SAF-T explains how VAT numbers are derived, while e-invoicing/e-reporting ensures the correct VAT is applied to each transaction.
• Tax authorities increasingly require both approaches, so businesses must manage VAT across real-time reporting, periodic returns, and audit-ready data.

Source: vatcalc.com

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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