Reverse charge: get the hint, make the call yourself

When you supply a business in another EU member state, the VAT may not be yours — it may be your customer's. That is the reverse charge: VAT is payable by the recipient. The document must then not show VAT and has to carry the note pointing to the reverse charge. Whether it applies to a document is your call: Univents suggests the flag when it may apply and sets it with one click.

When Univents suggests the flag to you

All of the following must apply:

• The recipient is stored as a company on the document and has a VAT identification number on file.
• The recipient's country and the country under Settings → Company are both in the EU and are different member states.
• The document is an invoice that does not carry the flag yet. A credit note always takes the flag from the invoice it cancels; an invoice created from a quote takes it from the quote.

When all of these apply, the editor shows a note underneath the switch saying the reverse charge may apply here, with a button next to it that sets the flag. Nothing changes unless you click it.

When the reverse charge does not apply anyway

All of these can apply and the reverse charge is still wrong: if you sell rooms, catering or admission, the service is taxed where it is carried out — on site, in your country. That holds even when the customer is a company with a VAT identification number in another EU country. On such documents the tax rates stay as stored — in Germany 19 or 7 percent — and the flag stays off.

That is why the note in the editor is a suggestion, not a decision: Univents knows the recipient and the country, but not what you are selling.

What happens to the document when you set the flag

• Every line item sits at 0 percent — even when the article itself carries a tax rate.
• The document's VAT total is 0; the net total is unchanged.
• The totals block carries the mandatory note “Steuerschuldnerschaft des Leistungsempfängers” and, underneath, the recipient's VAT identification number if one is maintained. The same sentence is printed in Germany and in Austria.

A credit note for a cancelled invoice shows the same tax as the document it reverses.

Getting the rates back: switching the flag off

Turning the flag back off on a draft restores the tax rates the line items carried before — including a rate such as 7 percent. Univents remembers each rate individually as soon as the reverse charge displaces it. If you change a line item's tax rate on a document that carries the flag to a value other than 0, Univents remembers that new value too — it comes back when you switch the flag off.

That is the difference from the small business scheme: there the line items stay at 0 percent when you switch off, because the earlier rate cannot be guessed.

The note on the document

The wording comes from your document layout. Layouts you edit in the editor add it automatically as soon as the flag is set.

If you work with a Word template, that template does not print the note itself. The editor points this out as soon as you set the flag: add the sentence to your template as a text block, or move to an editor layout. An issued document without the note should be cancelled and issued again.

Accounting integration

With an accounting integration connected, a document carrying the reverse charge is not transferred automatically. The editor tells you as soon as you set the flag. Enter the document in your accounting software by hand as usual, or upload it there as a file.

Issued documents

The flag cannot be moved on an invoice that has already been issued. That is deliberate: an issued document has to stay unchanged. If you need a correction, cancel the invoice and issue a new one.

Invoice chain and existing documents

When Univents creates an invoice from an accepted quote, it brings the quote's flag along — including the final invoice created when you complete the event.

Existing documents are not changed afterwards and keep their current tax rates. The switch to a suggestion applies to new documents and to drafts whose flag you move yourself.