EY acquires VALITAX, a promising Belgian start-up

• EY announces the acquisition of the start-up VALITAX, a cloud-based VAT engine that makes VAT treatment much easier for companies and helps them save both time and money.
  
  
• Danny Vermeiren, the founder of VALITAX, will join EY as Associate Partner to lead the further development and expansion of the tool.

VALITAX has tremendous growth potential, because it makes VAT look easy. This VAT engine allows clients to automatically validate VAT calculations and tax codes, combined with intuitive visualizations of the risks and opportunities discovered by the tax engine. It was developed by Danny Vermeiren, who has over 20 years of experience in European VAT and global indirect taxes. Over the years, he became a recognized expert on VAT automation through tax engines.

Danny Vermeiren has designed VALITAX from the ground up, resulting in the first true VAT engine that feels natural and intuitive to VAT professionals. The use of VALITAX significantly reduces the risk of errors and thus avoids invoices having to be credited and re-invoiced because of incorrect VAT rates. This results in significant time and cost savings for the client.

Adding real value for EY’s clients

EY decided to acquire VALITAX because it’s the first tax engine that has been designed according to the principles and mechanism of Value Added Tax, leading to an agile engine that is transparent and fast to implement, but above all accurately calculates the VAT treatment of even the most complex transactions, combining various layers of VAT content with a proprietary calculation sequence. Moreover, due to the innovative design, clients can now benefit from this engine without having to go through an integration project, which should also be a game changer. Thanks to the VALITAX tool, EY will also be able to provide continuous & up-to-date VAT rates and VAT rules to its clients, which means that they won’t need to follow them up themselves.

The integration into EY will allow VALITAX to accelerate the completion of its tool with extensive VAT country content. It will also allow VALITAX to significantly increase its market potential by leveraging EY’s solid brand, as well as its network and existing client base. For EY, the integration of VALITAX will mean adding real value for its clients.

“The main reason for joining EY is not only to put a better tool in front of more clients faster, but even more the belief that together we can make a much broader and lasting impact on the VAT world as a whole, through continuous and relentless innovation. I am looking forward to join the growing team of EY”, says Danny Vermeiren.

“Our priority is to provide our clients with leading tools and resources to better anticipate and adapt to rapid change and face the disruptive forces fundamentally changing our working world. VALITAX’ innovation and expertise deepens our current capabilities and support of existing accounts”, says Marc Joostens, VAT Leader of EY Belgium.

For Patrick Rottiers, CEO of EY Belgium, “this acquisition is an example of how EY is working to provide clients with holistic solutions, which are enabled by technology. Clients acknowledge that they need to modernize their tax operations; with VALITAX and EY together, VAT departments will benefit from broadened digital VAT service offerings that bring the VAT domain knowledge and scale to help guide and implement their transformation agenda.”