Joe Lynam

Now the EU is looking at creating a simplified Europe-wide way for companies selling across borders digitally.

The Commission has included the payment service providers SumUp to its expert group and Anton Svanev is the global head of tax with SumUp and is on the line from Bulgaria.

Good morning, Anton.

Good morning to you and to your audience, Joe.

I'm sorry about that.

Okay.

And so I suppose you'd be a rival to the likes of Square or even our own Stripe.

Would that be fair?

Now, you have been asked to join the expert group for the European Union, and that is looking at VAT and cross-border payments.

What does the EU want to change when it comes to VAT?

Yes, this week, in fact, it was in the budget this week.

So let's focus on the single registration because that's important.

At the moment, if you're an Irish company and you sell in Bulgaria and Estonia, you have to register with the tax authorities in Estonia and Bulgaria, which can be annoying, especially if you're selling in 20 or 30 countries separately.

In future, will you just have to register once in your home tax authority and that will do you all over European Union?

Which should remove a lot of red tape for companies.

You also mentioned e-invoicing.

What is e-invoicing?

It probably won't be an issue for your companies because a lot of your customers will be kind of younger, digitally native people.

It might be a problem for the older companies, the smaller companies.

Anything else that the VAT expert group will be discussing that we can expect to see in the next few years?