The OECD calls it seamless taxation. This is what it looks like.
Seamless taxation. Proof inside the transaction.
Real-time tax architecture that proves compliance without exposing the transaction. Aligned with OECD Tax Administration 3.0, EU ViDA and eIDAS2.
01
What seamless taxation is
Seamless taxation is the OECD's term for embedding tax into the systems where transactions already happen, so that reporting and payment become a by-product of doing business rather than a separate filing after the fact.
The OECD set out the direction; this is what it looks like once the proof lives inside the transaction and not in a return submitted months later. The traditional model leaves a gap between the moment value is created and the moment tax is verified, and that gap is where mistakes, disputes and fraud accumulate. Closing it is the whole point. The idea has two halves that belong together: the reporting side, where an authority receives verifiable proof the moment a transaction happens, and the collection side, where the tax amount itself moves at that same moment. This is real-time taxation with certainty built in, and the canonical definition sits in the glossary.
02
Three properties make it work
The same three properties hold across every tax domain, which is why one foundation carries so many applications. They are what turns real-time verification from an ambition into an architecture.
Privacy enhancing technologies
A business proves a transaction is correct without exposing the data behind it. The right VAT rate, on the right amount, verifiable without a single invoice line leaving the business.
Atomic transactions
The fiscal moment, the payment moment and the recording moment collapse into one event, verified within milliseconds instead of reconstructed in a later audit.
Compliance by design
The architecture enforces the rule as value changes hands, rather than reporting on it afterwards. Correctness is established up front, not repaired later.
Cross-border by design
The same architecture lets a business meet a mandate like ViDA without building a central store of every transaction. Identity is verified across borders without exposing the records behind it.
03
One foundation, multiple applications
One foundation carries every application below. The insight underneath is simple: the problem does not sit in the individual taxes, it sits in the execution logic beneath them. Each application stands at an honest stage.
- VATPilot / R&D
- Gambling taxR&D
- ConstructionProposal
- Agentic commerceHorizon
04
The evidence
The direction is not theoretical. It has been recognised, recorded and measured against the scale of the problem it addresses.
EU VAT gap, the problem this architecture is built to close
2023, European Commission
Winner of the Dutch Ministry of Finance Innovation Award 2025.
A world record 50 million transactions per day on decentralised infrastructure (March 2023).
The Dutch tax-splitter model is featured in the OECD's Tax Administration 2025 report (Box 4.4).
The full evidence trail, with every primary source, sits in the research library.
05
From more data after the fact to more certainty up front
Read as one grid, the change is simple to state. Each row moves from collecting more data after the event to producing more certainty as it happens, and none of it asks a tax authority to hold more of the transaction than it does today.
Today
- Periodic returns
- Batch processing
- Manual checks on a sample
- Corrections after the fact
- Data copies
- Domain-specific solutions
With the audit layer
- Continuous verification
- Event-based processing
- Automatic detection across the whole population
- Prevention up front
- Proofs, not data
- One generic foundation
From more data after the fact to more certainty up front.
06
In the pilot, VAT splits off to the tax authority at the moment of payment, the rest goes to the business. No separate filing, because the proof sits inside the transaction itself.
The same route lets a business meet a mandate like ViDA without building a central store of every transaction, and you can follow where real-time reporting mandates stand country by country. One architecture answers the mandate and the privacy question at once.
Our new approach eases the burden for everyone, it represents a paradigm shift. From reporting afterwards to verifying directly in the transaction.
Anne-Fleur Geneste
Dutch Tax Administration
07
See it happen
Watch the split take place in the live demo, or talk to us about a pilot that runs alongside what you already have. It does not replace your systems, and every phase has its own go or no-go.
Get the one-pager
The real-time tax architecture on one page, as shared with policymakers.
Used once to send the file. No newsletter unless you ask.