Invisible Borders: How tax rules shape the world we trade in.

Invisible Borders shows how value-added tax quietly shapes the world we trade in.

Value added tax is often treated as a technical system that operates in the background of everyday transactions, its rules expected to follow clear borders and to determine where economic activity takes place and who may tax it. Yet in a global and digital economy, those borders no longer decide as much as they once did.

This book explores how VAT increasingly relies not on geography but on function, allocating taxing rights by reference to how goods and services are used and accessed rather than where they are formally located. As traditional territorial rules struggle to keep pace with complex value chains and digital transactions, outcomes are hence determined through interpretation and judgment rather than through clear location.

The book follows a single case that is fictional but not invented, built from real disputes, real audits, and real legal uncertainty. Drawing also on case law, administrative practice, and real-world examples, it reveals how VAT now operates in an in-between space that is neither fully territorial nor fully global. Borders remain present in the legal texts, though their role has notably shifted, and responsibility is often assigned only after transactions have taken place, through quiet and pragmatic decision-making.

Written for readers who engage with VAT in practice and in analysis, this book shall resonate with the VAT community as well as with scholars and professionals interested in how legal rules operate in a global economy.

Invisible Borders is not a manual and not a policy blueprint. It is an invitation to see VAT differently, as a system that works remarkably well while relying on borders that have become increasingly invisible.