In a round led by Viola Private Equity, VATBox raised $24 million in growth equity funding. The company says the new capital will be instrumental in driving growth and taking advantage of a market plagued by “inefficient, risky, non-visible, and limited” manual service providers.
“As the first and only tech player in this market,” VATBox CEO Isaac Saft said in a statement, “we provide fully secure and easy-to-use solutions that maximize VAT recovery, while adding an essential compliance and governance layer that has not been available before.”
The investment is the first major funding for VATBox, which was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Herzilliya, Israel. VATBox provides cloud-based VAT (value-added tax) recovery solutions for multinational companies. Importantly, VATBox also provides a compliance and governance layer that provides full accountability and transparency for both CFO and controller.
VATBox CEO Issac Saft demonstrated the VATBox Automated VAT Recovery and Visibility platform at FinovateEurope 2015.
VATBox tells users how much international VAT has been spent across the entire business, as well as the likely amount of VAT that can be reclaimed—by country, date, and expense type. The optimization features of VATBox show, for example, the difference between potential and actual VAT returns, and information on lost VAT refunds.
As Saft explained from the FinovateEurope statge: “As a business, if I know how much of what I spend is the VAT part, if I have the evidence [to] prove that business expense [and] if I am familiar with a practical way of getting my money back, I can go and take my money.”
“There is nothing about ‘taxes’ here,” Saft said. “It is all about getting your money back.”
In June, VATBox announced a partnership with Concur, bringing VATBox’s VAT-recovery functionality to clients of Concur’s expense-reporting platform. The technology is available in 40 different countries—from Australia and Canada to Taiwan and the United States—and the company plans to use its new capital to help fuel “aggressive” growth in both new and existing markets. VATBox made its debut at FinovateEurope 2015 in London when it demonstrated its Automated VAT Recovery and Visibility platform.
