An adjusted form for the VAT return 2022 (German abbreviated: USt-VA) was published.
Overview
The form and the instruction for 2022 have been finalized.
The ELSTER data structure was adjusted on February 24th, 2022.
Current state
The form together with the instruction were published by the Federal Ministry of Finance (German abbreviated: BMF) on October 11th, 2021. On December 23rd, 2021 the instruction has been amended.
Compared to the previous year solely editorial changes were made in the form.
The new form has been already released for production by the tax administration within the ELSTER API. For this purpose, on November 25th, 2021 the corresponding plug-in for the so-called ERiC libraries has been published and on February 24th, 2022 amended.
Special case: late changes
A late initiated legislative procedure (process ID: 282595) lead to the necessity of change adaptation of the form instruction and the ELSTER data structure. The law was promulgated on December 29, 2021 in the Federal Law Gazette (German abbreviated: BGBl. I p. 5250) and came into force on January 1, 2022.
The law provides, inter alia in § 24 German VAT law a change in the VAT rate from „10.7 percent“ to „9.5 percent“, for flat-rate farmers or foresters.
This lead to the need to adapt the instruction and the ELSTER data structure. The form itself did not need to receive any adjustments.
Adjustments in the ELSTER data structure
Due to the change in law, an adjustment with regard to the new VAT rate for the field 80 as of 2022 is necessary.
The new, corrected ELSTER data structure was published on February, 24th 2022 (ERiC 35.4).
The previous version (ERiC 35.3) did not take into account the VAT rate of 9.5%. This could lead to a verbose warning produced by the ERiC libraries as of 2022 during data validation, if the VAT in field 80 deviated from the calculated amount from field 76. The incorrect triggering of the warning could be generally ignored if the VAT in field 80 was plausible.
Adjustments in the instruction compared to the previous year
The instruction has been amended in three places. The changes in the instruction are marked with black lines on the edges of the text.
The following is a rough description of the changes:
- Note on the changed VAT rate in field 80 as of 2022,
- Obligation for farmers and foresters with a total turnover of more than 600,000 EUR to apply the standard VAT rate taxation,
- Specifying when tax-free intra-community deliveries should be reported and what the consequence of incorrectly fulfilling this obligation is,
- The notice regarding Intrastat has been removed.
Download
The form and the amended instruction (dated December 23th, 2021) are available under the following links:
BMF-Schreiben vom 11.10.2021 (GZ: III C 3 – S 7344/19/10001 :003, DOK: 2021/1078309)
BMF-Schreiben vom 23.12.2021 (GZ: III C 3 – S 7344/19/10001 :003, DOK: 2021/1317450)
Change history
2021-12-17: The Bundestag has approved the law.
2021-12-23: The BMF publishes the adapted instruction.
2021-12-29: The change of the VAT rate was promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette (BGBl.).
2022-01-12: ELSTER announced the probable date for the USt-VA data structure update.
2022-02-24: ELSTER published the adjusted USt-VA plugin for 2022.
Do you need an ELSTER API connection?
Recht logisch specializes in tax APIs in Germany. The company supports software manufacturers in the process of connecting their software to the ELSTER API and developed a state-of-the-art solution for this purpose.
Feel free to contact Krzysztof Tomasz Zembrowski in case of questions concerning the ELSTER ERiC API.
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