The ROI: the register you have to apply for before you need it
It is not a one-click formality. Hacienda checks that the activity is real, can ask for documentation and can take weeks to decide.
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.
Registration is applied for on form 036, ticking the relevant box and giving the expected date of your first intra-Community transaction. From there, the Tax Agency checks that the declared activity exists: it can ask for contracts, supplier invoices, a business plan, or even visit the business address.
Once registration is granted, your NIF with the ES prefix becomes your intra-Community VAT number and appears in VIES, where your European clients check it.
It can be lost
The administration can remove from the register anyone who stops filing form 349 or who cannot show intra-Community activity. Removal is not notified to your clients: they find out the day they look you up in VIES and you are not there.
A case that surprises people
An autónomo who is never going to sell outside Spain still needs the ROI if they buy services in the European Union. Taking out €400 a month of advertising from a platform based in Ireland is an intra-Community acquisition of services: with the ROI, the invoice arrives without VAT and you self-assess it on form 303 — in two boxes, with no net effect; without the ROI, it arrives with Irish VAT that is never recovered.
On €4,800 a year of advertising, and at the Irish general rate of 23%, that unrecoverable foreign VAT is €1,104 thrown away over a formality that was not completed.
The mistake that comes up most
Applying for it on the same day you have to issue the invoice. Weeks can pass between the application and registration taking effect, and until then the transaction cannot be treated as intra-Community. You apply as soon as you can see the first transaction coming, not when it is already on top of you.
Where this carries on in Cairos: Form 036 and its boxes.
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.
RegulationsVIES
The European Commission's VAT information exchange system, where you check whether an intra-Community VAT number is registered for intra-Community transactions.
VATFiling period
The interval each self-assessment is worked out and filed for: quarterly as a general rule, monthly in a defined set of cases.
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.