There is a global trend toward increasing VAT rates and broadening the grounds for charging VAT. Governments increase their tax revenues in this way as a means of combating increasing budget shortages due to the financial crisis and/or for financing the reduction of direct taxes (corporate tax, income tax, etc.).

Numerous multinational companies use very many different tax codes and risk facing a “shortage” of necessary tax codes. Companies face bottlenecks with SAP‘s 2 character tax codes and the many necessary modifications in SAP in the event of VAT rate changes.

It seems therefore a straightforward matter, however in practice a considerable amount of activities are required to get this properly implemented in SAP.

The reason is that VAT codes in SAP are not set-up with validity dates and therefore for every VAT rate change a new VAT code has to be created. Due to the complexity in SAP, the creation of a new code is just the starting point to get SAP up and running.

Below you find a non-exhaustive list of required activities in case of VAT rate changes. It depends on the current configuration of VAT functionality whether all activities listed below are required. The opposite is also possible that more activities are necessary. Read More