VAT functional information
VAT stands for ‘Value Added Tax’.
The legal basis for the exchange, is a Council Regulation and a Commission Implementing Regulation:
1) Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1541 of 2 October 2018, amending Regulations (EU) 904/2010 and
(EU) 2017/2454 as regards measures to strengthen administrative cooperation in the field of value added tax.
2) Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1129, providing details for implementing the access to vehicle registration data for VAT purposes.
Links to the relevant legislation:
2018/1541: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32018R1541
904/2010: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32010R0904
2017/2454: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32017R2454
2019/1129: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32019R1129
The legislation aims to fight cross-border VAT fraud by simplifying administrative cooperation. The EUCARIS application is used to implement a series of services that aim to help fight cross-border VAT fraud with vehicles.
All EU Member States are required to implement the VAT services. In the legislation, the implementation date is set at 1st January 2020.
For detailed functional specifications, visit the VAT documentation page.
For technical information about the VAT service, visit our knowledge base:
VAT technical info.
For detailed information provision per Member State, visit the data overview page.
To use the links above, you need an account for this website. If you do not have an account, you can request an account by contacting EUCARIS Operations
Description of the VAT services
The VAT functionality consists of four different services.
The VATVHOH service provides holder and owner information of a vehicle at a specified moment in time, or, if not specified, the current date and time. It is possible to request the information either by Vehicle Identification Number or by license plate number, in the Member State of registration of the vehicle.
The VATVHOHLifecycle service provides holder and owner information during the lifecycle of a vehicle, i.e. all holders and owners from the start of vehicle registration until now. The information is requested by the Vehicle Identification number.
The VATAllVHOH provides information about vehicles held and owned by a specific natural person or legal person, referred to as the ‘Person of Interest (PoI)’. The PoI is identified by name (surname, first name and date of birth of a natural person, or legal person name) or number (national id number or VAT number), or both. It is possible to also provide search refinement data (such as an address, additional personal data, or the identifier of a vehicle known to be held or owned), that can be used to select the PoI if the search is not uniquely identifying. The information is requested in one specific Member State.
The requester must be able to identify the PoI uniquely. The list of vehicles held/owned is 500 max. For (legal) persons holding more than 500 vehicles (which, of course, do exist) the list has to obtained in an offline manner, via a contact in the Member State. Contact information, in this case, is provided in the response message.
The services VATVHOH, VATVHOHLifecycle and VATAllVHOH can be used in both single case mode (i.e., the request contains one information request related to one specific VAT case and multiple case mode (i.e., the request contains multiple information requests, related to multiple VAT cases). The multiple case mode is also referred to as ‘batch’ mode.
Requests by VIN in single case mode can be sent to one specific Member State, but is also possible to send a multi country inquiry, i.e., send a request to all or a subset of Member States connected to the VAT network. Request in ‘batch’ mode are always sent to one specific Member State, as well as request by license plate number, as well as a VATAllVHOH request with data of a PoI.
For processing multiple case requests, a Member State can choose between two options:
- It can implement a service that is able to process ‘batch’ requests.
- It can use the EUCARIS batch processor to process ‘batch’ requests. If this option is chosen, the Member State can implement one service that is able to answer single case requests. Support for ‘batch’ requests is not needed, batch processing capabilities are handled by EUCARIS.
Detailed information about the batch processor can be found at the VAT documentation page.
The VATHitNoHit service provides information if a vehicle is registered in a particular Member State or not. If so, it is also reported if a holder or owner is registered at a specified moment in time, or, if not specified, the current date and time. A VATHitNoHit is usually sent to all Member States connected to the VAT network.
The VATHitNoHit service is only available in ‘batch’ mode. It is possible to send requests to one specific Member State, or all Member States, or a subset of Member States connected to the VAT network.
For processing VATHitNoHit ‘batch’ requests, however, EUCARIS uses the batch processor (more information on the VAT documentation page). This means that Member States receive single case requests only, and must be able to answer single requests only.
Web client
All VAT services are implemented in the EUCARIS web client. Single case requests can be typed in. The response will be received in 20 seconds max, and can be viewed and analysed directly.
To send multiple case requests, besides typing requests, it is possible to upload a .csv file, e.g. a file with VAT case information created in Microsoft Excel. After the response has become available, it is possible to convert the response to .csv format again, and use Microsoft Excel for further analysis of the results.
VATAllVHOH requests can be created using results of a VATVHOH or VATVHOHLifecycle response, i.e. select a specific holder and owner in that response, and use the name and address data of that holder or owner to create the request. The advantage of this approach that the request uses name and address data provided by the Member State that is inquired. This reduces the chance that the search fails, because the search criteria provided by the requester, do not match exactly with the data recorded in the Member State inquired.