Eu vat: EU VAT Directive

The EU VAT Directive that goes into effect on 1 January 2010 needs to be incorporated into the domestic legislation of all 27 EU Member States. The 2010 VAT Package makes fundamental changes to the place of supply of services rules – VAT on services will be levied at the actual physical place where the customer is located. The status in each country varies and, even where there is draft or final legislation, this does not necessarily mean that all aspects of the new rules have been incorporated in each country.

The countries with final or draft legislation are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the U.K. The countries with no legislation are Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Romania. Common guidelines for interpretation of the rules are being produced by the U.K. for the EU Commission. It has been proposed that these could form the basis of consistent EU-wide adoption of the rules.