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This is a test deployment and is not authoritative. The published site is at unvtd.unece.org.Under developmentThe UNVTD project is in development phase and is not yet ready for production implementation. The final approved and implementable standard is expected to be released before the end of December 2026.
Business CasesTax

Tax — Business Case

The case for a tax / revenue authority adopting verifiable trade documents and identity to lift domestic compliance.

The largest fiscal opportunity. Verifiable invoices — issued in the buy-sell flow and matched to settlement in payment & reconciliation — lift VAT and corporate-tax compliance without the heavy infrastructure of network-hub e-invoicing. An authority that wants visibility is simply cc’d on a verifiable credential, rather than sitting as a “5th corner” in a network.

Where the value comes from

  • Revenue integrity — domestic ③ (primary) — authentic invoices, matched to payment, lift VAT and corporate-tax compliance (Buy-Sell, Payment & Reconciliation).
  • Transfer-pricing inflow — cross-border value-consistent invoices deter profit-shifting, recovered as corporate tax (Border Compliance).
  • Compliance & auditability ⑦ — every sale attributable and verifiable.

What it costs

A one-time verifier integration (receive and validate invoices, reconcile to payments) plus mandate design and change management. No network or per-transaction fees — and no separate cross-border build.

Payback

A modest one-off cost against a large, recurring revenue uplift — typically a short payback. Strong real-world evidence (national e-invoicing programmes have lifted tax revenue by double-digit percentages).

Domestic and cross-border

UNVTD is designed first for cross-border trade, where no single jurisdiction can mandate a format and no network reaches every counterparty. The architecture itself draws no distinction. A verifiable invoice issued to a domestic buyer and one issued to a foreign buyer are the same document, carry the same semantics and are verified the same way, so a business that implements once is equipped for both and does not run two systems (see Implementation Model).

Whether to apply it domestically is a matter for each government. Tax-compliance policy, the transaction visibility an administration seeks, data-protection law and any e-invoicing mandate already in place differ between jurisdictions, and UNVTD takes no position on them. The specification supports domestic use; it does not assume it.

Where a jurisdiction is weighing a four-corner or five-corner network model — PEPPOL is the familiar example, and the Portable Credentials page sets out how these models evolved — the policy intent behind that model can also be met with portable credentials. Both approaches aim at the same things: invoices that are authentic and attributable to a registered business, structured data an administration can rely on, and a route towards continuous transaction controls. What differs is what each requires to get there. A network model asks every participant to join through an access point, and the authority takes its place as an additional corner in the exchange. Portable credentials ask for no network at all: the invoice is verifiable by whoever receives it, and an authority that wants visibility is copied on the credential.

Adoption differs as well. A network model generally needs a mandate, because participants bear the cost before they see the benefit. A verifiable invoice can be adopted without one, since the same document also serves the customer, the bank and any foreign authority that accepts it. Where a mandate is not politically available, or where one would in practice reach only the largest firms, that difference can matter more than any comparison of features.

None of this is an argument for replacing networks already deployed. Businesses connected through EDI or PEPPOL continue to benefit from those channels, and the same verifiable document serves the parties that are not connected to them. The question this section addresses is narrower: what an administration that has not yet built such a network should consider building.

Generate your business case

Light — attach your tax-gap study, revenue statistics, or national budget, then paste the prompt below into a browsing-capable frontier model (ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini). It fetches the UNVTD method and returns a 4–8 page draft; ask it to convert to Word.

Full — for exact, data-grounded figures, clone the repository and run Claude over the per-country data. See the generation guide.

Copy the Light prompt

You are preparing a first-draft UNVTD business case for the tax / revenue authority whose document(s) are attached. The goal: adopting verifiable trade documents and verifiable identity (UNVTD + GRID) to lift domestic tax compliance (VAT and corporate income tax).

INPUTS
1. Attached document(s) — extract the country, GDP, VAT and CIT rates, any published VAT/CIT gap figures, current e-invoicing coverage, and relevant administrative context. Where a figure is absent, use the benchmark defaults on the methodology page and say so.
   No document? Set your country and the model will use its published data — COUNTRY: __________ (replace, e.g. Kenya). The model reads your country's row from the Evidence section (https://unvtd.unece.org/evidence/) for a country-grounded estimate, using income-band defaults only for figures not in the tables. If neither a document nor a country is given, ask the user which country before proceeding.
2. Fetch these UNVTD pages (and follow their links for detail):
   - Method (formulas, defaults, cost model, counting rules, conservatism): https://unvtd.unece.org/business-cases/assessment-methodology/
   - This stakeholder's case (levers, cost layers): https://unvtd.unece.org/business-cases/tax/
   - Scenarios: https://unvtd.unece.org/use-cases/buy-sell/ and https://unvtd.unece.org/use-cases/payment-reconciliation/

METHOD
Apply the method from the Assessment Methodology page to this authority's lever — revenue integrity – domestic (primary) — plus the transfer-pricing inflow from border compliance. Use that page's attribution chain, UNVTD/GRID share (45%, range 30–60%), compliance share, adoption scenarios (30/50/70%), cost model, and counting rules. Count the transfer-pricing value once, under domestic revenue.

RULES
- Be conservative — use the lower end of every range unless the attached document gives strong, specific evidence for a higher figure.
- Show your working for every figure (inputs → formula → result); present every monetary figure as a range.
- Give a confidence level (High / Medium / Low) per benefit line, and conservative / base / optimistic scenarios.
- Assess ecosystem readiness — national register / GRID status, e-invoicing maturity, and the main accounting/ERP vendors in-country.
- Write in plain markdown; end by telling the reader to convert it to Word.

OUTPUT — a 4–8 page business case with these sections:
1. Executive summary — headline recoverable-revenue range, cost, payback.
2. Authority profile — from the attached document.
3. Why verifiable trade matters — the declaration→evidence shift; cc'd on a credential, not a network corner.
4. Estimated benefits — domestic revenue (with confidence + the three scenarios); the transfer-pricing inflow.
5. Estimated implementation cost — verifier integration + mandate/change management (decentralised model).
6. Payback, NPV, ROI — assumptions and the 30–60% attribution sensitivity.
7. Implementation roadmap — Discovery → Alpha → Beta → Live.
8. Assumptions, methodology & references — link the fetched pages.
9. Next steps.

If you cannot browse the web, use Full mode instead (clone the repository; the full method and per-country data are local).

Learn more

Assessment Methodology · scenarios: Buy-Sell, Payment & Reconciliation · related: Customs, Country

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