Tax
Europese Commissie — Belastingen & Douane (DG TAXUD)
DG TAXUD is the European Commission's Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union: the department that prepares EU tax and customs policy and oversees its implementation. Alongside policy and legislation on VAT, excise duties and business and personal taxation, taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu also covers the customs side — the Union Customs Code, import and export procedures, customs controls, rules of origin and authorisations such as AEO status — and the CBAM registry. The department also runs a set of public databases: VIES for checking VAT identification numbers, the Taxes in Europe Database (TEDB) covering around 650 taxes in the EU countries as supplied by the ministries of finance and freely accessible, TIC with per-country invoicing rules, VAT refunds and standard rate, SEED for the validity of excise numbers, and TIN for tax identification numbers.
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What this source does not give you
This is the EU layer, not Dutch implementation. Rates and rules in the EU databases are supplied by the member states themselves and do not replace national statutory text, national policy decrees or the Tax Administration's practice; where these differ, the national source governs. A VIES validation states whether a VAT identification number is valid at that moment and nothing more: it is no judgment about the nature of a transaction, the applicable rate, or whether the zero rate may be applied.
Legal domains for which LEO consults this source
Dutch legal domains; each link opens the domain page on leo.prudai.com.
Frequently asked questions
- What can and can't I do with VIES?
- VIES, the VAT Information Exchange System, is the service for checking whether a VAT identification number is valid. That is useful for cross-border supplies, but it is a validity check, not a tax qualification. Whether an intra-Community supply actually qualifies for the zero rate depends on the facts and the evidence around the transaction — national legislation and the associated policy govern that, not the outcome of a number check.
- Does an EU rates overview override Dutch law?
- No, nor is it meant to. TEDB and TIC contain information the member states themselves supplied to the Commission; they are overviews, not legislation. They are strong when you need to know quickly how another member state has arranged something or what standard rate applies there. For a Dutch position, Dutch statutory text, supplemented by policy and case law, remains the basis.
- Does this source cover customs as well, or only taxation?
- Both. Besides the tax subjects, DG TAXUD publishes on the Union Customs Code, import and export procedures, customs controls, rules of origin and authorisations such as Authorised Economic Operator status, plus the electronic customs systems. For questions about the movement of goods, that is often the part that actually matters.
- What does LEO use this source for?
- LEO queries DG TAXUD live for tax questions with a cross-border element: VAT on intra-EU supplies and services, excise duties, customs procedures and the EU rules sitting behind a Dutch provision. The answer then names both the EU source and the Dutch implementation, so it stays visible which layer carries which part.