Vatx — EU and cross-border value added tax for small | vatx.org
On a cross-border sale to a VAT-registered business, the seller does not charge VAT at all — the customer accounts for it, and VIES is the check that makes it legal.
The reverse charge is the default treatment for intra-community supplies between businesses. The seller issues an invoice at 0%, notes the customer's VAT number and country, and adds a statement that the reverse charge applies. From that moment the tax is the customer's affair: they account for it in their own member state through their own return.
No threshold softens the rule. Whether the invoice is for €50 or €50,000, a valid business customer takes the tax home with them. This is the opposite of the consumer regime, where the €10,000 OSS line decides.
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VIES — the VAT Information Exchange System — is the legal validation step. Each member state has its own accepted format: Germany nine digits, France two characters plus nine digits, Italy eleven digits, Spain nine characters, Poland ten digits.
When VIES rejects a number, the usual cause is mundane: a company registration number was supplied instead of a VAT number. The remedy is to ask the customer for their VAT number in the national format and validate again — not to invoice at 0% on faith.
If the number never validates, the supply is not a reverse-charge sale. Home-country VAT may be due, and the thresholds page on this site shows what registration would then involve.
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