Intra-EU acquisition of goods

What it means

An intra-EU acquisition is the purchase of goods that physically moved to Slovakia from another member state as part of the supply. It mirrors an intra-EU supply: the seller invoices without tax and the buyer declares it by self-assessment.

It is not an import: for goods from outside the union the tax is settled in a customs procedure, whereas goods from the union meet no customs control and the whole event takes place inside the VAT return.

What matters is where the goods move, not where the seller is based. If a German supplier sells goods from its own warehouse in Slovakia, that is a domestic supply with Slovak VAT and no acquisition arises; if goods travel along a chain through several states, the triangular trade rules decide which participant is taxed on the acquisition.

How it works in practice

The tax falls due on the date the invoice is issued, or, if the seller is late with it, on the fifteenth day of the month following the month of acquisition. The tax point therefore cannot be read off the date the invoice reached the bookkeeper.

A VAT payer declares the tax in the VAT return and, where the conditions hold, deducts it in that same return; the transaction also enters the control statement and must agree with the supplier’s EC sales list in VIES.

When ordering, the company has to give the supplier its VAT number; without it the supplier charges the tax of its own state and the acquisition regime does not apply. When we process the invoice we therefore check that it carries the buyer’s VAT number and a reference to the supplier’s exemption, and with larger volumes we also watch the Intrastat reporting obligation.

What to watch out for

The dangerous case is a purchase by a company that is not registered for VAT. Once acquisitions pass the annual value the Act sets, registration becomes compulsory and the tax is paid with no right of deduction, so VAT assessed after the fact is pure cost rather than a pass-through.

If the supplier wrongly charges its own country’s VAT, the Slovak payer cannot deduct that tax in its return and usually cannot recover it through a foreign VAT refund either, because it was not correctly charged. The only way out is a corrective invoice from the supplier, and until it arrives the amount of the tax sits with the supplier.