The VIES return in Ireland: intra-EU sales explained

Revenue’s own wording is that this applies regardless of the value of the goods or services, so even a single small sale to an EU business customer brings the obligation.

Revenue requires a VIES statement from Irish VAT-registered traders who zero-rate goods, services or both to VAT-registered customers in another member state. There is no minimum value. The statement lists each customer’s VAT number and the value supplied to them, which lets the customer’s tax authority check that the VAT is accounted for at their end.

According to Revenue’s VIES traders manual, statements are monthly or quarterly. If your intra-EU supplies of goods exceed €50,000 in a quarter, you file monthly. If you supply only services, you may choose quarterly or monthly. Every statement is due by the 23rd of the month after the period ends.

VIES statements are additional to the VAT3, not part of it. The VAT3 has its own boxes for intra-EU trade: Revenue states that all VAT-registered traders must complete E1 and E2 for goods dispatched and acquired. Intrastat is a further, statistical return, required monthly once annual imports from or exports to other member states exceed €750,000.

Goods moving between Ireland and Northern Ireland are still accounted for as intra-Community supplies and acquisitions, and the reporting obligations, including VIES and Intrastat, stay the same. Northern Ireland traders use the XI prefix on their VAT numbers for these transactions. Services to Northern Ireland and to Great Britain follow different rules.

The usual problems are a missing or invalid customer VAT number, a sale coded as a zero-rated intra-EU supply when the customer was a consumer, and VIES totals that do not agree with the intra-EU figures on the VAT3s. Reconcile the two each period before filing either.

The key is to record each EU customer’s VAT number and to code zero-rated intra-EU sales distinctly from domestic or export sales. HelloBooks stores customer VAT numbers and codes each sale with its treatment, so the totals by customer can be pulled from the ledger. Automated VIES statements and the E1, E2, ES1 and ES2 figures are on the HelloBooks roadmap, so prepare the statement from those totals and file it in ROS yourself.