Free VAT Reverse Charge Checker

Reverse charge moves the accounting entry from the supplier to the customer. The supplier issues an invoice carrying no VAT and the wording that explains why; the customer books the VAT due and, where recovery is full, deducts the same amount in the same return, so the cash effect nets to zero and the reporting effect does not. Direction matters both ways. Charge Irish VAT to a German business on a supply that belonged to the customer and it cannot recover that VAT through its own return, so it asks for a credit note and a corrected invoice, and which period that correction lands in is a question for the member state whose VAT you charged.

This checker reads four fields and returns the general rule. Any services supply between two EU countries marked business to business comes back as reverse charge, which is Article 44 with Article 196 over it, and that is the right answer for most of what a services business invoices. The carve-outs sit outside the four fields. Admission to a physical event is taxed where the event happens under Article 53, so a conference ticket sold to a business in another member state carries local VAT and no reverse charge, while the same event attended virtually returns to Article 44. Services connected to land, restaurant and catering supplies, and short-term hire each have a place of supply of their own.

Common practice is to copy the wording from the last invoice that worked, and it holds until one of two things moves. Article 226(11a) requires the words "Reverse charge" on the invoice, and in the triangulation case C-247/21, decided in December 2022, the Court held that in that setting another form of words cannot be substituted and cannot be repaired afterwards. On an ordinary Article 44 supply the customer is liable by operation of law and a wording defect is formal, which is a smaller problem and still a correction somebody has to make. The other thing that moves is the customer. A VAT number valid at the last invoice can be deregistered before the next one, and that number goes onto a recapitulative statement where the mismatch surfaces months later.