For most people, tax is something that happens in the background. For the teams responsible for getting GST right across Australia aFor most people, tax is something that happens in the background. For the teams responsible for getting VAT right across the Gulf and the dozens of markets they trade with, it’s anything but.
Governments around the world are overhauling how they collect and verify tax. Digital reporting requirements, mandatory e-invoicing, and real-time data submissions are becoming standard practice — not just in the Middle East, but across Europe, Asia-Pacific, and beyond. The pace is accelerating.
The United Arab Emirates offers one clear example. Mandatory e-invoicing via the Peppol network in the PINT AE format, using a 5-corner model, applies to large businesses from 1 January 2027, smaller businesses from 1 July 2027, and government entities from 1 October 2027. A pilot begins 1 July 2026, with selected taxpayers joining voluntarily to test the end-to-end flow; businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more must appoint an accredited service provider by 30 October 2026 and go live on 1 January 2027. The pressure on businesses across the Gulf is already here, as each market moves toward structured, real-time reporting on its own timeline.
For multinational companies, this creates a growing coordination problem. Finance and tax teams must reconcile data from multiple internal systems, interpret rules that vary significantly by country, and meet filing deadlines that don’t leave much room for error. A mistake doesn’t just mean rework, it can mean audits, penalties, and reputational risk.
Until recently, most teams have managed this through a combination of spreadsheets, manual processes, and hard-won institutional knowledge. That approach is reaching its limits, and the time cost is real. For many finance and tax teams, indirect tax compliance consumes weeks of resource every period, gathering data, chasing exceptions, and reconciling figures across systems under the pressure of immovable deadlines.
The compliance landscape is also changing shape. Real-time reporting through e-invoicing and periodic indirect tax compliance are no longer separate workflows. With agentic AI, they converge bringing together e-invoicing, reconciliations, and compliance preparation into a single, integrated automated workflow, closing the gap that has long been a source of risk and rework.
Where AI fits in
The promise of AI in compliance isn’t to replace human judgment, it’s to remove the volume of repetitive, low-value work that currently consumes most of the time. Pulling data from different systems, checking for inconsistencies, flagging mismatches before they become filing errors: these are tasks that don’t require expertise to execute, but consume the time of people who have it. The shorthand for what that looks like in practice is touchless compliance, a process that moves largely on its own, with human attention focused on review and exceptions rather than data wrangling. That capability is powered by CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters AI technology that has already surpassed one million professionals worldwide, and now brought to the complexity of global indirect tax compliance.
ONESOURCE Indirect Compliance powered by CoCounsel is built around that idea and is generally available starting July 3. It can import data from any company’s financial system, transactional records, and where available, drafts provided by tax authorities themselves. It also works to identify and resolve issues before deadlines arrive. Rather than a scramble at period-end, the goal is a steady, auditable process that reaches a review-ready state with time to spare.
“Getting new countries on board could take weeks, sometimes months. Having ONESOURCE Indirect Compliance powered by CoCounsel will help us identify changes to mappings, guide us through configuration, and streamline the whole process. These changes will genuinely be transformative for a global operation like ours.”
— Kevin Escott, Executive Director, Corporate Functions Technology, JLL
Trust is the harder problem
Automating compliance is technically achievable. The harder challenge is making automation that practitioners actually trust, especially when their name is on the filing. ONESOURCE Indirect Compliance powered by CoCounsel is built to meet that standard because it incorporates Fiduciary-Grade AI™, where its outputs are transparent, verifiable, and defensible in high-stakes environments. Touchless compliance is only valuable if the trail it leaves behind is one you’d be comfortable defending.
What comes next
In the Gulf, the digital tax era is arriving fast. As other Gulf states prepare similar frameworks, the businesses that build connected, auditable workflows now will be best positioned for what comes next.
Visit our website for more information on ONESOURCE Indirect Compliance powered by CoCounsel.
