Anyone dealing with VAT configuration in SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA On-Premise or Private Cloud will, sooner or later, face a fundamental design decision: Should each country get its own Tax Procedure, or can multiple countries be consolidated into a single, unified procedure?

In many companies, the SAP system remains a black box for the tax department, with its automated processes and data provenance remaining obscured. In this article, Lars Bohn, a specialist in VAT IT and partner at kallman, sheds light on how the gap between the functional department and IT creates risky uncertainties, and identifies the levers tax professionals can use to regain full control over their data flows.

Anyone who sets up tax determination in SAP SD receives an initial proposal for automated tax code determination in the Sales and Distribution module with the configuration delivered by the manufacturer. In this article, tax determination expert and kallman partner Lars Bohn sheds light on which configuration proposals SAP S/4HANA provides and how these differ from previous system generations.