The 7 VAT treatments you can select
The editor's VAT-treatment dropdown is grouped into Domestic / EU cross-border / Third country / Special schemes, with a plain-language description per option:
- Standard: a normal invoice with VAT at your country's rate.
- Domestic reverse charge: domestic B2B where the recipient owes the VAT (construction is the classic case).
- Reverse charge (EU B2B): a service to an EU business with a valid VAT-ID. Highlighted in the dropdown because it's the most common cross-border case.
- Intra-community supply of goods: goods to an EU business; needs the customer's VAT-ID plus proof of dispatch.
- Export (third country): a supply outside the EU, tax-exempt.
- Small business (non-VAT): you are not VAT-registered; the exemption notice is printed on the invoice.
- Other exemption: for exempt supplies that need an explicit reason code.
Your default scheme and rate live in Settings → Tax, together with your VAT registration status, VAT-ID, tax number, invoicing country, and, if applicable, your small-business declaration.
The VAT notice writes itself
Several treatments legally require a specific notice on the invoice ("VAT to be accounted for by the recipient", the small-business exemption wording, and so on). You never type these yourself: the correct notice is generated by the system and shown read-only in the editor, exactly as it will print on the PDF. Notice texts exist in German and English, and the reverse-charge and intra-community notices additionally cover the main EU languages.
If you hand-type something that looks like a VAT notice into the free-text notes, the editor gives you a non-blocking warning, a nudge that the system already handles it.
VIES validation for EU VAT-IDs
For EU cross-border B2B treatments, the customer's VAT-ID is checked against the EU's VIES register. In the editor, the customer's VAT-ID shows an inline status badge with an on-demand re-check button. The rules:
- Reverse charge (EU B2B) and Intra-community supply require a VAT-ID with a valid VIES result before you can finalize.
- Domestic reverse charge requires the customer to have a VAT-ID as well.
- A valid check older than 30 days is flagged as stale, so re-check before issuing.
- If a customer has no VAT-ID on file, the schemes that need one are grayed out until you add it.
- Intra-community supply of goods additionally asks you to confirm proof-of-dispatch evidence at finalize.
The VAT-ID lives on the customer record, so a validated ID benefits every future invoice to that customer.
Wrong-VAT protection
Showing VAT on an invoice that shouldn't carry any can make you owe that VAT, just because it's printed. TaxItEasy guards against this class of mistake at two levels:
- In the editor: choosing any zero-rate scheme (reverse charge, intra-community supply, export, small business, other exemption) locks every line item's VAT rate to 0%, with a toast explaining why.
- At finalize: hard blocks make sure a non-VAT-registered company or a small-business invoice can never show VAT, and reverse-charge or intra-community invoices can never carry a VAT rate other than 0%.
These are guard-rails against the common failure modes, not tax advice. When in doubt about which treatment applies to a transaction, ask your tax advisor.
Related
- Create and send an invoice is where the treatment, notice, and totals come together
- Products and the article catalog explains how VAT rates on catalog items are validated per country
- Credit notes and cancellations covers corrections dated into the current VAT period
- Invoice numbering sequences is the numbering half of invoice compliance