Digital VAT carousel fraud. A new boundary for criminality?

The article analyzes the first VAT fraud on voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), the Phuncards-Broker operation, which took place in Italy between 2005 and 2007. The authors explore the policy implications for tax authorities, looking at how changes in their strategies may reduce incentives to participate in the fraud. They argue that, in the short term, information technology solutions might offer some of the best answers when effectively combined with reverse charge, while, in the longer term, an extension of the one-stop shop system may represent a new hypothesis of VAT reform in an anti-fraud perspective.