What Is a VAT Return? What Goes in Each Box

A VAT return is the periodic declaration of the VAT you charged, the VAT you were charged, and the difference you owe or reclaim. Every EU member state requires one, and every one uses a different form with differently numbered boxes — but the underlying structure is the same everywhere.

Understanding that structure means you can read any of them.

The universal shape

Whatever the form is called — FR0600 in Lithuania, UStVA in Germany, JPK_V7M in Poland, Modelo 303 in Spain — it has four parts:

1. Output side. Your sales, split by how they were taxed:

• Taxable supplies at each rate, reported as the net amount and the VAT amount separately
• Zero-rated supplies: exports, intra-Community supplies
• Exempt supplies
• Supplies where the customer accounts for the tax (reverse charge)
• Supplies outside the scope of domestic VAT

2. Acquisition and self-assessment side. Purchases where you owe the output tax: intra-Community acquisitions of goods, services received from abroad under reverse charge, and domestic reverse-charge purchases. Each appears as a net amount plus the self-assessed VAT.

3. Input side. Deductible VAT: on domestic purchases, on intra-Community acquisitions, on imports, and on reverse-charge purchases — often in separate boxes, because the authority wants to see where recovery originates.

4. The result. Total output VAT minus total deductible VAT, giving an amount payable or a refund.

Why net and tax are separate

Almost every return asks for the taxable amount and the VAT in different boxes, and the reason is control. Given a net amount and a rate, the authority can compute the expected tax and compare it with what you declared. A mismatch is a flag.

That is also why "just report the totals" fails: 100,000 € at 21% and 100,000 € at 9% produce different VAT, so the split by rate is not presentational — it is the arithmetic the return is checked with.

Some boxes are net-only, some tax-only. Germany's UStVA takes taxable supplies at 19% and 7% as bases only, with ELSTER computing the tax, while input VAT boxes are tax amounts. Reading a form correctly starts with knowing which is which.

Frequency and deadlines

Monthly or quarterly, decided by turnover or by tax authority assignment, with annual returns in some countries on top. Germany moves companies to monthly filing above a prior-year VAT threshold and can waive returns entirely below a lower one. Lithuania files monthly for most registered payers. Poland files monthly with the return and the invoice registers combined in a single JPK_V7M file.

Deadlines are national and unforgiving. What matters operationally is that the return must be produced from a closed period — which is why period locking exists. Filing from an open period means the figures can change after you have declared them.

Where returns go wrong

• Missing purchase invoices. Input VAT not registered before the deadline is recovery deferred to a later period, or lost.
• Wrong VAT classification. A domestic-rate line that should have been intra-Community lands in the wrong box, so both boxes are wrong even though the total may look right.
• Credit notes in the wrong period. A credit note reduces VAT in the period it is issued, not the period of the original invoice.
• Reverse charge omitted because it nets. Both sides are reportable even when the net effect is zero.
• Bad-debt relief run as a credit note. In Lithuania the relief adjusts the output-VAT box only, leaving the taxable amount untouched — a credit note would reduce both. See bad debt.

How Nordlet produces returns

Returns are computed from the ledger rather than typed. POST /v1/declarations/eu/vat-return/compute { countryCode, year, month } dispatches to the country pack registered for that country and returns the numbered boxes with labels, plus warnings and the source the mapping was verified against.

Three packs ship today:

• Lithuania — FR0600. Driven by i.SAF VAT classifiers, so each invoice line's classifier determines its boxes.
• Germany — UStVA. The official Kennzahlen, with bases in full euros and tax amounts with cents, per the BMF form instructions.
• Poland — JPK_V7M. The declaration part, plus a full XSD-valid XML file including the invoice registers, through /v1/declarations/pl/jpk-v7m/generate.

Every pack lists warnings for what it could not map and notes for what it deliberately leaves to you — German import VAT and EU B2B services boxes, Polish GTU markers and fixed-asset splits. The design rule is that a line the system cannot classify is surfaced, never guessed, because a wrong VAT-return box is worse than a missing one.

The country packs are gated to companies registered in that country, and the country support page records exactly what each covers.

Honest scope: no return is filed automatically. The figures and, for Poland, the file are produced; submission to ELSTER, the MF gateway or VMI remains a human step. Other countries' returns are not implemented yet.

FAQ

What is a VAT return?

A periodic declaration of the VAT you charged on sales and were charged on purchases, with the difference payable to the tax authority or refundable. It is filed monthly or quarterly depending on national rules and the size of the business.

Why do returns ask for the net amount and the VAT separately?

So the authority can verify the arithmetic: net amount times rate should equal the declared VAT. It is a control mechanism, which is why supplies must be split by rate rather than aggregated.

What happens if I file a VAT return late or wrong?

Penalties and interest, set nationally. Errors are usually corrected through an amended return or by adjusting a later one, depending on the country and the size of the error — and both are far cheaper than a correction the authority finds first.

Do reverse-charge transactions go in the VAT return?

Yes, on both sides — the self-assessed output VAT and the corresponding input VAT, in separate boxes. They typically net to zero but must still be declared.

Can VAT returns be generated automatically from accounting data?

The figures can, and should be — they are sums of classified transactions. Nordlet computes the boxes for Lithuania, Germany and Poland directly from the ledger. Actually submitting the return still requires the national portal or an accredited channel.