In the mid of March 2014 WW+KN organized the annual meeting of the Tax Representative Alliance (TRA) in Regensburg. More than 40 experts from 20 countries participated in the conference.
More than 40 experts for auditing, taxation and legal advice from 20 European countries met three days in Regensburg, Bavaria, for a conference. WW+KN organized the annual meeting of the Tax Representative Alliance (TRA) in Regensburg this year. TRA is an alliance of independent auditing, tax consulting and legal firms from all relevant European countries. The seat of TRA is in Paris, France. The TRA member firms consult mostly medium-sized clients in their countries, national and international clients as well.
Especially TRA is focused on cross-border VAT consulting, VAT representation and special VAT consulting. Since the VAT system has been harmonized inside the European Union (EU) in 1993, the VAT rules should be the same in all EU countries. “However in the cooperation with other countries we realize very often that there are big differences between the countries how the EU-rules were implemented in national law and how long it takes to change the national law according to the EU rules”, TRA Vice President and WW+KN managing partner Matthias Winkler said. One goal of the annual TRA meetings is to understand how the systems work in other countries and how the people think the other countries.
Furthermore it is very helpful to know the TRA colleagues in the other countries. It is easier to call someone you know as someone you do not know. “In our globalized world most communication is done anonymous by e-mails”, Matthias Winkler explains. “TRA tries to do things more personal and bring people together”. A cooperation over borders works only if people knows each other. This is also the reason why the TRA alliance works very effective and why more than 120 referrals between the members were changed in the last 12 months.
