Intrastat

What it means

Intrastat is statistics, not tax. It collects data on the physical movement of goods between Slovakia and the other member states, separately for arrivals and for dispatches; the Statistical Office sets the methodology and the Financial Administration collects the returns electronically.

It is not the recapitulative statement: that one is a tax filing, covers services as well as goods and follows the invoice, while Intrastat follows goods crossing the border whether or not they are sold. Goods sent for processing or into a call-off stock belong in it too.

Imports and exports outside the Union are not part of Intrastat: statistics take that data straight from customs declarations in customs proceedings. Intrastat covers only trade between member states, where no customs declaration exists, which is why the company itself has to supply the data. Services are not in it at all, even when invoiced together with the goods.

How it works in practice

The duty starts only once the threshold is passed, counted separately for each direction and announced by the Statistical Office; from then on the return is monthly and the duty carries into the following year. Each line carries the combined nomenclature code, the country, the weight, the invoiced and statistical value and the nature of the transaction.

The data comes from the warehouse, not from the invoice book: on an intra-EU acquisition the return follows the date the goods arrived, not the date the invoice was posted. Returns, complaints and replacement deliveries have transaction codes of their own and belong in the return just as sales do.

In a triangular transaction, where a Slovak company buys goods in one state and sells them into another without the goods ever passing through Slovakia, it files no Intrastat, although the deal does appear in its recapitulative statement. When we take on a client with such deals, we compare the transport documents, not just the invoices, to know what really crosses the border.

What to watch out for

A company passes the threshold mid-year and files nothing for the first months because nobody watches the threshold. The Statistical Office fines the failure under the state statistics act, and the returns then have to be filed retrospectively, month by month, which is more work than keeping them current.

The threshold generally counts all movements of goods in a given direction, not just sales. A company that leaves out goods sent for processing, returns or transfers to a fulfilment warehouse abroad crosses the threshold sooner than it thinks, and finds out only from a Statistical Office notice with several months of returns missing.