VIES: checking is good; keeping the evidence is better
It is a free check that takes twenty seconds. And it is the only thing separating an exempt supply from an assessment with interest three years later.
The European Commission's VAT information exchange system, where you check whether an intra-Community VAT number is registered for intra-Community transactions.
VIES — the VAT Information Exchange System — is not a Spanish database: it is the system Member States use to check each other's registers of operators. The check is public, free and online.
Why it is no longer a formality
Since the so-called quick fixes, in force since 2020, article 25 of the VAT Act makes the exemption for an intra-Community supply conditional on the customer having given a VAT number from another Member State and on the transaction being correctly declared on form 349. These are substantive conditions: if they fail, the exemption falls away, however real the transport was.
An example with numbers
A supply of €20,000 of goods to a Portuguese client, invoiced without VAT. If their VAT number was not validated in VIES on the day of the transaction, the administration does not argue about whether the goods reached Porto: it claims the €4,200 of VAT plus interest for late payment.
How you keep the evidence
The check returns a result with a date. It is worth keeping it with the invoice, not in a separate folder: when the formal request arrives you will have to match every transaction to its validation, and three years later nobody remembers what was checked when.
The mistake that comes up most
Validating once when you set the client up and never looking again. Removals from the operator registers happen without notifying the supplier, and the one answerable for the exemption is you. On recurring transactions, the sensible thing is to revalidate periodically and keep a record.
Where this carries on in Cairos: How form 349 is filled in.
Terms that go with this one
Almost no tax concept makes sense on its own. These three are the ones that most often turn up beside it.
Intra-Community VAT number
The tax identification number with the ES prefix, assigned once you are registered on the Register of Intra-Community Operators and visible in VIES.
RegulationsROI
The Tax Agency's Register of Intra-Community Operators, which you have to be on to trade without VAT with the rest of the European Union.
VATVAT charged (cuota repercutida)
The VAT you add to the taxable base of your invoice and charge the client, to pay over to Hacienda afterwards.
This, handled without thinking about it
Cairos keeps the invoices, the record books and Hacienda's forms from the same data, so the theory on this page turns into boxes that are already filled in.
No card and no minimum term.