Regulation 2025/517 - Amendment of Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 as regards the VAT administrative cooperation arrangements needed for the digital age - Main contents

Official Journal

of the European Union

EN

L series

2025/517

25.3.2025

Council Regulation (EU) No 904/2010 (3) lays down the conditions under which the competent authorities in the Member States responsible for the application of the laws on value added tax (VAT) are to cooperate with each other and with the Commission to ensure compliance with those laws. Those conditions entail, among others, rules on the storage and exchange, through electronic means, of information that could help to effect a correct assessment of VAT, monitor the correct application of VAT, particularly on intra-Community transactions, and combat VAT fraud.

Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 (4) introduced into Council Directive 2006/112/EC (5) digital reporting requirements. Those requirements oblige taxable persons identified for VAT purposes to submit to Member States information on each intra-Community supply of goods, on each supply of a service that is taxable in a Member State other than that in which the supplier is established and, unless the Member State has made use of the option to exclude taxable persons from the obligation, on each intra-Community acquisition of goods and on each acquisition of services that is taxable and for which the recipient is liable to pay VAT. The exchange and processing of that information on intra-Community transactions assists Member States in monitoring the correct application of VAT and in detecting fraud.

The existing cooperation between the tax authorities of Member States is based on exchanging aggregated information between national electronic systems. The introduction of digital reporting requirements aims to increase tax collection by providing transaction-by-transaction data to tax administrations in a timely manner. To make such data available to other tax administrations in an efficient manner, and to facilitate the common implementation, as well as a common interpretation, of analyses and crosschecks, a central system where VAT information is shared is necessary.

In order to enable Member States to fight VAT fraud more effectively, the Commission should establish an electronic central VAT information exchange system (‘central VIES’) for sharing VAT information. Each Member State should establish a national electronic system to automatically transmit to the central VIES information about intra-Community transactions as reported by the respective suppliers and acquirers in different Member States. Member States should also automatically transmit to the central VIES the VAT identification information of taxable persons making intra-Community transactions, including other VAT identification numbers issued to a person. Furthermore, whenever data are changed, Member States should upload the metadata for tracking the modification time into the central VIES as well.

Member States should automatically update the VAT identification information of taxable persons making intra-Community transactions in the central VIES without delay whenever identification information changes, except where Member States agree that such update is not pertinent, essential or...