Oct 15, 2026 | AI and product innovation
Real-Time Tax Reporting Is Here. Manual Reconciliation Isn’t Going to Keep Up
Indirect tax (IDT) teams in Europe are facing a multitude of forces; the pressure to do more with limited time and resources, the rapid development of advanced AI solutions, and, in many jurisdictions, the accelerating rollout of e-invoicing and real-time continuous transaction controls (CTC) government mandates.
These pressures matter when IDT teams look to reconcile often fragmented data from portals and compliance systems, and then match and investigate line items. This is manual work that doesn’t scale as transaction volumes and jurisdictions grow.
CoCounsel now powers ONESOURCE Reconciliations
ONESOURCE Reconciliations, first launched in January 2026 and available in 70+ countries, is built to help IDT teams identify and resolve discrepancies faster and at scale by reconciling e-invoice data against VAT/GST return data at line level.
ONESOURCE Reconciliations powered by CoCounsel is now building on this foundation by bringing Thomson Reuters Fiduciary-Grade AI™ standard to reconciliations in a real-time compliance world, so teams can move as fast as tax authorities expect, and produce transparent, verifiable outputs.
Two new agentic AI capabilities are embedded directly into the reconciliation workflow: reconciliation templates are reusable across future periods without rebuild effort, and every mismatch comes with a resolution a reviewer can act on in one step. What used to take days now takes minutes, without losing human oversight needed to review, explain and defend outputs.
When Regulators Expect Answers Fast, the Audit Trail Has to Be Read
Regulatory requirements are becoming ever tighter, with rapid reconciliation of pre-filled returns no longer optional in many countries. Romania and Hungary, for example, require rapid reconciliation, and failure to explain variances leads to fines or forced payments. Meanwhile, e-invoicing mandates and real-time digital reporting requirements are being implemented throughout the European Union (EU) as part of the Value-Added Tax in the Digital Age (ViDA) initiative which is extending exposure across the EU. As a result, IDT leaders are navigating a patchwork of complex regulatory mandates when operating across multiple jurisdictions.
Teams are stretched even further as companies pursue expansion into new countries without wanting to proportionally increase resources. The manual approach to compliance is becoming unsustainable and needs to be replaced with global compliance standardization that respects local regulatory mandates.
To address this gap, ONESOURCE Reconciliations powered by CoCounsel matches e-invoice and return data at line level, with jurisdiction-aware logic that shows exactly why a mismatch happened, not just that one exists. It generates a clear trail behind every resolution, thereby supporting audit readiness and defensible responses to authority notifications.
What Happens When Compliance Stops Consuming Everyone’s Time
The recently published ‘Inside Europe’s Indirect Tax function’ report by the Thomson Reuters Institute has found that only 10% of companies surveyed have fully automated data reconciliation. It therefore shouldn’t come as a surprise that data reconciliation is the top automation priority for 47% of European respondents.
Automation and digitization of compliance present a unique opportunity for IDT teams to transition into a more strategic role.
IDT leaders can turn freed-up capacity into strategic value and focus on work where human judgement matters most. This includes engagement with the C-suite, measurement of ROI, and development of business cases for continued investment. By expanding into higher value advisory roles, IDT teams are set to make a visible contribution to organizational business objectives.
Find out more and see a demo of ONESOURCE Reconciliations powered by CoCounsel here.
