On 5 November 2020, the National Council of the Slovak Republic approved an amendment to Act No 222/2004 Coll., on value added tax, as amended, which we informed about in more detail in the previous edition of our Newsletter. Below is a brief overview of the changes brought by the amendment to the VAT Act:
- redefinition of mail order sales by means of the term “distance sale of goods” and adjustment of the place of delivery;
- extension of voluntary special arrangements for the application of the tax to services provided by a non-EU taxable person to a non-taxable person established in an EU Member State;
- extension of the existing voluntary special arrangement, the Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS), which currently only applies to digital services, to other services provided by a taxable person not established in the EU to other than taxable persons established in some EU Member States, the place of delivery of which is in the given Member State of consumption;
- extension of the existing voluntary special arrangement MOSS for digital services supplied by taxable persons, which are established in the EU territory but not established in the Member State of consumption, to other services provided by this taxable person, as well as to the distance selling of goods within the EU, and certain domestic supplies of goods – extension of the system to a single point of contact, the One Stop Shop (OSS);
- new voluntary special arrangement (the Import One Stop Shop – IOSS) for the sale of goods at a distance, which are imported from a third country if their own value does not exceed EUR 150 and these goods are not subject to excise duty. By means of this special arrangement, taxable persons may fulfil their obligations to file a tax return and pay tax in only one Member State of identification;
- abolition of the tax exemption on imports of consignments the value of which does not exceed EUR 22;
- introduction of the possibility to correct the taxable base if the supplier did not receive payment and its receivable became uncollectible and, at the same time, introduction of the obligation to correct the taxable base for the customer who did not pay for the supply and claimed a tax deduction.
The approved amendment will enter into effect on 1 January 2021, except for the provisions concerning, in particular, the sale of goods at a distance, which will enter into effect on 1 July 2021.
