In connection with the introduction of deferred settlement on 1 January 2017, a new service in TVINN (TVINN customer service) is being introduced, which checks the declared VAT status of the business based on the organisation number. It also checks whether the business is active (not discontinued). The service has an indirect interface to the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities.
| Note: An update of this article is pending. Please note that some terms and/or references may differ from the Movement of Goods Act and the Customs Duty Act that enters into force from the 1st of January 2023. |
Businesses that are registered for value added tax shall no longer declare value added tax in connection with the customs clearance of goods. Instead, VAT on importation shall be determined in the same way as domestic VAT. The current VAT return will be replaced by a new VAT return.
Checking the VAT status of the business
Upon receipt of the customs declaration, TVINN performs a search to check whether the declared business is registered for VAT, or if it has an overlying unit that is registered for VAT. If the declared business is part of a corporate hierarchy, the search will continue upwards in the hierarchy to check the VAT status of the affiliated units.
The search is performed to determine whether the business is qualified for deferred settlement based on its own VAT status or the VAT status of an affiliated unit. For private persons with a customer number that does not have 9 digits, it will be assumed that the individual in question is not qualified for deferred settlement, and VAT must be declared on importation.
Examples of VAT status checks:
- If business A is registered for VAT, then business A is qualified for deferred settlement.
- If business A is not registered for VAT, and consequently not qualified itself for deferred settlement, it is checked whether business A is linked to business B by the role BEDR or ORGL.
- If the linked business B is registered for VAT, then business A is also qualified for deferred settlement.
- If the linked business B is not registered for VAT, then business A will not be qualified for deferred settlement either.
What happens when TVINN customer service is unavailable?
When TVINN customer service is unavailable or TVINN does not receive a response within the expected time, TVINN will use the VAT status from its own customer register to determine whether the declared business is qualified for deferred settlement.
In such cases discrepancies may occur between the VAT status of the business in TVINN and the VAT status in the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities. This can occur, for example, in connection with the fact that a business can change its VAT status and no declarations have been carried out in TVINN after the VAT status was changed, so that the customer register in TVINN has not been updated. The risk that error situations such as this will occur is considered to be low.
Consequence: If the declared business is not listed as registered for VAT in the customer register in TVINN, the customs declaration will be processed as if the business is not qualified for deferred settlement. Customs declaration without value added tax (box 47) will be rejected.
Error messages
- Customs declarations with VAT tax lines for businesses that are registered for VAT will be rejected in TVINN with error code 390 – VAT shall not be stated for customers registered for VAT.
- Customs declarations without VAT tax lines for businesses that are not registered for VAT will be rejected in TVINN with error code 636 – Value added tax not stated.
Check whether business has been discontinued
At the same time that the VAT status is checked, it is also checked whether the business has been discontinued. If the business has been discontinued, the customs declaration will be rejected with error code 398 – Customer's organization number cannot be discontinued.