Methodology

Sources

Three primary reference sources back every rate and rule on this site:

  • European Commission Taxation and Customs Union — the EU's central VAT-rate registry. We pull standard, reduced, super-reduced, parking, and zero rates for each of the 27 member states. Each row links to its EC source page.
  • VIES (VAT Information Exchange System) — the live EU validation service. Our validator forwards user input to VIES at request time; we do not cache lookups. When VIES is unavailable, we return an explicit "service unavailable" state.
  • HMRC (gov.uk/topic/business-tax/vat) — UK VAT guidance and the UK VAT-number checker. Since 1 January 2021 (Brexit), VIES no longer validates GB-prefix numbers; HMRC's checker fills that gap.

Secondary cross-checks: Eurostat's historical VAT-rate harmonisation tables and per-member-state national tax-authority pages (linked from each country's detail row).

Refresh cadence

  • Per-country rates: 180-day baseline review, plus event-driven updates when a member state announces a change.
  • Reverse-charge rules: 365-day review (the EU VAT Directive changes rarely).
  • VIES + HMRC validation: live every request — no cache.
  • Special schemes (OSS, IOSS, margin, flat-rate): 180-day review.

Recent changes captured: Slovakia 20%-to-23% standard-rate increase (January 2025); Estonia 20%-to-22% (January 2024); Finland 24%-to-25.5% (September 2024); Luxembourg 16%-to-17% (January 2024, restoring from temporary 2023 cut).

Editorial process

PlainVAT is published by Kiznis Studio, a one-operator organisation. The pipeline is:

  1. Data extraction — rates and rules are read from EC, Eurostat, and HMRC source pages and stored in a versioned SQLite database with citation columns on every row.
  2. Editorial-pipeline drafting — explanatory prose (guides, country overviews, reverse-charge explanations) is drafted with editorial-pipeline tooling using the underlying data as input.
  3. Operator review — the operator reviews every page before publication. No content ships without human review.
  4. Source linkage — every rate row, scheme, and rule links to its authority page so readers can verify independently.
  5. Corrections registry — when a reader reports an error, we log it in a public corrections registry, fix the underlying data, and graduate the correction when the upstream source confirms.

What this is and is not

PlainVAT is an information reference. Use it to orient yourself on EU and UK VAT before consulting your accountant or the relevant tax authority for your transaction. Nothing on this site is legal or tax advice. We try hard to be accurate; we do not guarantee that every rate is current to the day.

Editorial standards we apply

Every page goes through a pre-publication checklist. Rate values must be paired with an effective-from date. Each rate row links to a primary authority page that an independent reader could verify. Quotes from EU directives are cited to the article number so the reader can find them in the consolidated text. Worked examples carry actual numbers from the database, not invented illustrations. Currency is named explicitly (EUR, GBP) rather than left ambiguous. Schedule changes that are announced but not yet in force are kept in a "known pending" notes column rather than rendered as current rates.

How we handle uncertainty

When a member state has signalled a rate change but legislation has not yet been gazetted, we keep the current rate live and note the pending change. When VIES is down, the validator returns an explicit "service unavailable" message rather than guessing. When two member-state sources contradict each other around transition dates, we flag the disagreement openly with both citations rather than silently picking one. The data is more useful when its limitations are visible.

Disclosures

  • PlainVAT does not accept payment to alter or remove data.
  • We do not endorse any commercial VAT software or accounting service.
  • The site is monetised by display advertising. Advertising does not influence editorial decisions.
  • We do not log VAT numbers submitted to the validator beyond the request lifetime.
  • We have no commercial relationship with any tax authority or VAT software vendor.