FAQ

We review rates on a 180-day baseline cadence and faster when a member state announces a change. Each rate row carries its effective_from date and a link to the authority source. The most recent changes captured are Slovakia (Jan 2025, 20% to 23%), Finland (Sept 2024, 24% to 25.5%), Estonia (Jan 2024, 20% to 22%) and Luxembourg (Jan 2024, 16% to 17%).

No. VIES (and HMRC) confirm whether a number is currently registered for cross-border VAT. They do not confirm trading status, financial standing, or contract validity. For UK numbers, HMRC will return the registered business name and address; for EU numbers, the level of detail varies by member state.

VIES depends on each member state's national VAT database. When a national database is down (maintenance, outage, or rate-limit), VIES returns service-unavailable. We pass this through honestly rather than retrying or guessing.

OSS (One-Stop Shop) is for B2C supplies of services and intra-EU distance sales of goods. IOSS (Import OSS) is for B2C imports of low-value goods (under EUR 150) from outside the EU. Both let a business file a single quarterly return in one member state rather than registering in every customer country.

EU-wide. Since 1 July 2021, total cross-border B2C distance sales across the entire EU below EUR 10,000 per calendar year are taxed in the origin country. Above that, you charge destination-country VAT via OSS.

The UK is treated as a third country since 1 January 2021. Goods exports are zero-rated at origin and pay import VAT at destination. Services follow the place-of-supply customer rule with the UK customer applying UK reverse-charge mechanics. The reverse-charge engine on this site encodes the main treatments.

Hungary at 27%. The lowest is Luxembourg at 17%. The median across the 27 member states is 21%.

No. PlainVAT is a plain-English information reference. For your specific transaction, always confirm with your accountant or the relevant tax authority. We try to be accurate; we do not guarantee day-of currency for every rate.

Kiznis Studio, a one-operator independent publisher. Content is drafted with editorial-pipeline tooling; the operator reviews every page before publication. There is no fabricated editorial team. The operator is the publisher.

Email hello@plainvat.com with the country, rate type, and a link to the source we should match against. All corrections are logged in a public registry and fixed in the next data refresh.