2026 World Tax Guide | Regional profile (Indirect Tax)

The EMEA indirect tax team at Deloitte comprises consultants in VAT, GST, and global trade advisory (including specialists in customs, excise duties, and export controls). Our practitioners possess a deep comprehension of regulatory intricacies, understand the criticality of industry-specific insights, and recognise the increasing significance of digitalisation and technology in efficiently managing an organization’s indirect tax profile and processes. 

Deloitte’s indirect tax practices across EMEA are at the heart of indirect tax’s evolution, with the EU acting as the engine fuelling the indirect tax agenda with new directives, legislation, and other regulations in various “new” indirect tax domains (EU Deforestation Regulation (“EUDR”), the Central Electronic System of Payment Information (CESOP), environmental-packaging/plastic taxes/Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), “behavioral” taxation, and digital reporting/VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA), to name a few). 

This means that our 2,221 indirect tax practitioners in EMEA (which are part of a global indirect tax network of more than 3,500 indirect tax practitioners) are contributing (together with Deloitte’s other service lines) to quickly bring broad-scale, tax-aligned business solutions, deploying the right industry-focused local and regional advisers to suit the needs of each client. 

Our EMEA practice sets itself apart with a high level of pragmatic experience and innovative spirit, mixed with an industry-specific approach, cohesive strategy, and high-quality services. It offers a collection of indirect tax tools and software, and an array of both virtual and physical Centers of Excellence offering consulting, indirect tax compliance, and trade services. These elements are in sync with Deloitte’s worldwide technology platforms, allowing for a broad range of integrated offerings.

Our European economies are facing various challenges including geopolitical change, inflation, supply chain disruptions, climate change, the need to re-invent industrial processes, as well as the boomerang effects of tariffs and sanctions. More than ever, organizations need assistance with navigating the maze of complexity, reevaluating their supply chains and business strategies while not being able to predict future changes in a fast-moving world. For example, the recent series of reversals and shifting timelines by the European Commission regarding the implementation and enforcement of EUDR, or the global upheaval caused by the frequent and significant changes in tariffs. 

At the same time, emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform indirect tax management over the short to medium term. 

It is, therefore, crucial in these times to guide organizations through these complexities with trade, customs, and VAT advice that manages compliance risk while simultaneously enhancing cash flow and efficiency. Our comprehensive services and technological solutions, mixed with industry knowledge, are key in addressing current and future challenges. Additionally, there's a growing need for digital transformation in business practices and compliance, despite the lack of uniform regulations. These multiple factors have not been a barrier to growth, but on the contrary, are contributing to it. Those who smartly navigate around them will be the ones grasping the full potential of our new world.

Deloitte EMEA's indirect tax team believes that, in order to assist our clients in the maze of requirements and uncertainties, we should continue investing in innovation and technology. With digital tax requirements becoming more complex, businesses need a new vision around their data and data models, investing wisely to be fit for purpose. The shift from periodic compliance ("push") to real-time data demands by tax authorities ("pull") means companies must interface with various platforms. In this regard, we offer a full spectrum of solutions including for e-invoicing, e-reporting, and Standard Audit File for Tax (SAF-T); global solutions for traditional compliance reporting; platforms to digitally manage indirect taxes; automated extraction solutions; reconciliation modules; indirect tax determination technologies; etc. Most importantly, we provide the necessary architecture and insight to bring everything together and integrate with a client’s tax and finance systems.

Due to increased complexity, technology investments, and talent shortages, organizations are often turning to service providers to manage their indirect tax functions. This can involve outsourcing entire processes, transferring internal advisory roles, or handling key functions like process management and risk management. This approach fosters strong collaboration between organizations and service providers, allowing clients to focus on their core strategy while keeping indirect tax operations under control. 

In the field of customs and trade, there is a strong demand to externalise customs compliance, Sanctioned Party List screening, mass classification, etc., for which we have developed a series of solutions (including Track-on-Trade, Trade Classifier) to operate such complex processes.

Key service offerings:

• Indirect Tax advisory, including VAT and GST, as well as other transaction-based taxes (including new taxes in the field of sustainability and environmental levies);
• Indirect Tax compliance and reporting;
• Indirect Tax automation;
• Indirect Tax strategy, transformation, and Operate (the indirect tax function); and
• Global Trade Advisory (GTA) and compliance;
• Environmental taxes advisory and compliance (EUDR, CBAM, plastic, packaging, and other local indirect taxes)
• Indirect Tax dispute resolution and litigation

Our approach towards data is distinctive. In the realm of indirect taxes, data is now crucial for key processes like VAT, customs compliance, billing, bookkeeping, e-invoicing, real-time reporting, SAF-T, local taxes, and environmental taxes, necessitating future-proof solutions due to evolving compliance needs. Consequently, Deloitte's indirect tax practices in EMEA have integrated technical experience with their IT and technology practitioners' abilities, yielding advanced tax technology and analytics skills.

Digital Tax Compliance (DTC) is Deloitte's proprietary technology for effectively managing global indirect tax compliance. This new AI-driven platform is the cockpit to manage data, processes, and reporting to handle end-to-end tax compliance while also enabling multiple digital reporting processes and creating value from available data. It manages massive data sets from different sources and have strong data-wrangling capabilities while being a two-way interface with a client’s ERP systems, third-party solutions, and tax authorities. 

DTC is part of the Intela Ecosystem. Intela is a connected and integrated technology ecosystem covering a range of compliance obligations including group reporting & statutory accounts, corporate tax, transfer pricing, Pillar Two, and indirect tax. Its capabilities include automated data extraction and mapping, streamlined processes and data-driven insights from compliance, all hosted within a single ecosystem allowing full oversight and visibility of an organization’s global obligations.

Deloitte's E-Invoicing solution, tailored specifically to integrate with clients’ existing systems, unlocks operational efficiencies in their invoicing process. Our specialists configure the solution to ensure seamless operation and minimize errors, leading to faster and smoother implementation. This approach provides adherence to E-invoicing regulations globally, providing a cost-effective solution for businesses seeking country-specific or global compliance. Deloitte's E-Invoicing solution facilitates a streamlined, compliant, and future-proof invoicing process.

Trade Classifier uses AI and cognitive technologies in the field of harmonized tariff schedule classification (for analyzing customs duties and managing customs compliance, as well as for VAT rate determination and Intrastat preparation).

In the UK, our customs declarations business goes from strength to strength, helping clients to simplify, accelerate, and complete the full customs declaration process on behalf of clients, using state-of-the-art solutions. 

In addition to these customs and trade compliance solutions, Deloitte has a range of analytics solutions and offerings that use data from tax and customs authorities to produce detailed, insightful customs analytics across multiple jurisdictions. This can help to highlight cost-savings opportunities as well as potential compliance weaknesses.

Finally, in the field of indirect tax knowledge and structured content, Deloitte has launched its global Indirect Tax Knowledge Hub, an innovative way to capture, gather, curate, and manage indirect tax changes taking place around the world (VAT knowledge, but also environmental taxes, digital requirements, etc.). Indirect Tax Knowledge Hub directly feeds into a series of knowledge-related deliverables, including a Knowledge Portal, a single website for clients to access a wealth of indirect tax knowledge in the form of very detailed and comprehensive topical surveys (more than 4,500 completed surveys are available at this stage, covering 80 countries). 

Other recent and specific indirect tax-related solutions include:

• The EUDR Due Diligence Statement (“DDS”) Manager is a solution designed to streamline EUDR compliance and reporting by automating DDS submission; providing real-time monitoring, centralizing records in a DDS repository, facilitating supplier data solicitation, and offering an optional AI-powered risk assessment.
• CESOP automated offering to enable payment service providers to report in each EU Member State where they provided payment services. This is a solution in a very sensitive data environment;
• CBAM reporting solutions to automate the generation of relevant reports and CBAM filings;
• Indirect Tax Atlas – a platform to help users understand enacted and upcoming changes in the taxation of indirect taxes (including e-invoicing and e-reporting, and electronically supplied services);
• PxS, an automated VAT solution assisting partially exempt businesses with VAT analysis and modeling, enabling allocations, sectors, and recovery methods to be modeled based on the impact analysis of the overall VAT position. Deloitte is currently developing a reporting module connected to PxS for automating the preparation and filing of insurance premium tax returns.

Deloitte teams across EMEA are also working on various other business applications, such as AI-related applicable use cases for automation of indirect tax processes, chain analyzer, blockchain solutions, and chatbots, etc.

ITR Awards:

Deloitte’s tax practices in EMEA earned a remarkable 35 awards at the International Tax Review (ITR) 2025 EMEA Tax Awards.

For the ninth consecutive year, Deloitte firms in EMEA collectively won ‘Tax Firm of the Year’, and for the third-year running, ‘Transfer Pricing Firm of the Year.’ Deloitte firms in the region received three additional regional awards, including ‘Tax Technology Firm of the Year’.

The 2025 regional and jurisdiction awards are listed below:

Regional (EMEA) Awards:

• Transfer Pricing Advisory Firm of the Year
• Tax Advisory Firm of the Year
• Tax Technology Firm of the Year
• Diversity Equity & Inclusion Firm of the Year
• ESG Firm of the Year

Jurisdiction Awards:

• Tax firm of the year: Baltics, Romania, CIS states, Malta, Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), Bulgaria
• Tax advisory firm of the year: UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Austria, Spain, Portugal
• Indirect tax advisory firm of the year:  Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Hungary
• Transfer pricing advisory firm of the year: UK, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Israel
• Tax disputes firm of the year: Germany, Greece

Impact Case and Deal:

• Impact Case of the Year: Joined Cases C-555/22 P, C-556/22 P and C-564/22 P
• Impact Deal of the Year: Cinven majority investment in Grant Thornton

Eminent leaders:

• Ronnie Dassen, Global Indirect Tax Leader
• Kristine Dozier, Global GTA Leader
• Johan Hollebeek, EMEA GTA (Global Trade Advisory) Leader
• Rogier Vanhorick, Global Indirect Tax Digital Leader
• Helen Thompson, NSE Indirect Tax Leader 

Contact details:

Phone: +1 718 508 6846
Email: ronniedassen@deloitte.com
Twitter: @Deloitte
Website: Deloitte.com/tax

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