EU + UK VAT rate comparison

Compare VAT rates before you sell

Name: EU and UK VAT Rate Landscape (Compare)
Creator: PlainVAT
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Pick any two of the 28 jurisdictions to compare standard and reduced rates, schemes, and cross-border treatment from source-linked current records.

Highest standard rate: 27% · Hungary
Second: 25.5% · Finland
Median standard rate: 21%
Top-10 cutoff: 23%+

The rate landscape

Hungary has the highest standard VAT rate at 27%, 6 percentage points above the 21% median across the tracked EU and UK jurisdictions.

According to the European Commission's Taxes in Europe Database (TEDB), with HMRC coverage for the UK.

27%
Highest, Hungary: 25.5%
Second, Finland: 21%
Median standard rate: 23%+
Top-10 threshold

Use the picker below for the full side-by-side treatment, including reduced rates, schemes, validation routes, and post-Brexit context.

This 28-jurisdiction EU and UK reference uses current standard-rate records from the European Commission's TEDB and HMRC for the UK. Open a country page to inspect its rate tiers, authority link, effective date, and validation route.

Highest standard VAT rates

Top 5 current standard rates in the tracked EU and UK corpus. The full ranked reference remains below.

How EU standard rates cluster

The 27 EU member states grouped by standard-rate band. Most sit in 20-21% (10 of 27) rather than at either extreme.

EU member states by standard VAT-rate band

Full reference: standard rates

All current standard rates, ranked high to low. Open any country for rate tiers, source links, and validation details.

#	Country	Standard rate
1	Hungary	27%
2	Finland	25.5%
3	Croatia	25%
4	Denmark	25%
5	Sweden	25%
6	Estonia	24%
7	Greece	24%
8	Ireland	23%
9	Poland	23%
10	Portugal	23%
11	Slovakia	23%
12	Italy	22%
13	Slovenia	22%
14	Belgium	21%
15	Czech Republic	21%
16	Latvia	21%
17	Lithuania	21%
18	Netherlands	21%
19	Romania	21%
20	Spain	21%
21	Austria	20%
22	Bulgaria	20%
23	France	20%
24	United Kingdom	20%
25	Cyprus	19%
26	Germany	19%
27	Malta	18%
28	Luxembourg	17%

What to do with this comparison

Turn the rate ranking into a specific decision

Hungary leads at 27% and the median across the tracked EU and UK jurisdictions is 21%; most EU members cluster in the 20-21% band. Use these figures as a starting point for one specific cross-border transaction, then verify.

Run the side-by-side picker
Compare two specific jurisdictions on standard and reduced rates, schemes, and cross-border treatment.
Open a country page
Inspect one jurisdiction's full rate tiers, authority link, effective date, and validation route.
Validate a VAT number
Check a VAT number against the live VIES or HMRC service before treating a cross-border sale as B2B.

Boundary: Rates and rules change; always confirm your specific transaction with your accountant or the relevant tax authority before acting on these figures.

Compiled from official public sources by the publisher.

Download the EU and UK VAT-rate landscape cited on this page: vat-rate-landscape.csv (CC0). Method notes live on /statistics and /methodology.

PlainVAT renders country-rate figures from the European Commission's Taxation and Customs Union VAT-rate registry; explanatory guidance links to its relevant authority sources. The quick-reference table above ranks all 28 jurisdictions by standard rate; use the picker for a full side-by-side breakdown including reduced rates, schemes, and cross-border treatment. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.