VIES submissions in Cyprus: what, when and how to file

If your Cyprus company invoices VAT-registered businesses in other EU countries, you file a monthly VIES statement on top of your VAT return. It lists every EU business customer by VAT number, with the value of what you supplied them. It has its own deadline, and you can only file it through Tax For All, the Tax Department's online portal.

What a VIES statement is

It's your monthly report of sales to businesses in other EU countries. VIES stands for VAT Information Exchange System, the network EU tax authorities use to cross-check cross-border trade. When you zero-rate a sale to a business in another member state, your deal with the Tax Department is that your customer accounts for the VAT at their end. That's the reverse charge. The VIES statement is your half of the evidence. You declare what you sold to each VAT number. The customer's tax authority compares that with what the customer declared buying, and queries any differences.

That's why the customer's VAT number matters so much. Zero rating rests on the customer being VAT-registered. So check the number in VIES-on-the-Web before you invoice, and keep the confirmation. A number that worked last year can be dead today if the customer deregistered or restructured.

Who has to file

Every Cyprus VAT-registered business that supplies goods or services to VAT-registered customers in other EU member states. It files monthly, and services catch people out far more often than goods. Under the general place-of-supply rule for sales between businesses, known as B2B, services such as consulting, software development, accounting, advertising and legal work are taxed where the customer is. That puts them on the VIES statement alongside goods. Say you invoice a German GmbH €2,000 a month for design work. No parcels, no customs paperwork, and still twelve VIES lines a year.

The exceptions are services with their own place-of-supply rules: work connected to immovable property such as land and buildings, passenger transport, restaurant and catering, admission to cultural and educational events, and short-term vehicle hire. A service taxed in Cyprus, or exempt in the customer's member state, stays off the statement too.

Sales to private consumers are never VIES supplies. They follow the distance-selling rules instead. Once your EU-wide sales to consumers pass €10,000 a year, you charge each customer's local VAT, normally through the One Stop Shop, the EU scheme that lets you declare it through one registration. If most of your revenue is Cyprus VAT in the ordinary quarterly cycle, our guide to how VAT works in Cyprus covers that side.

When the statement is due

By the 15th of the following month. Your VAT return runs quarterly and is due by the 10th of the second month after the quarter ends, so the two filings never run on the same rhythm. The founders we see missing VIES rarely misunderstand the rules. They've trained themselves to think about tax once a quarter, and a monthly filing slips past that habit eight months out of twelve.

During 2026 the Tax Department has moved several individual months to the 20th by announcement, because of availability problems with Tax For All. Each extension covers only the month it names. Plan around the statutory 15th.

How to file VIES in Tax For All

Online only, in Tax For All. Go to Returns, then Submit Return, and pick VIES as the tax type. There's no paper option, and TAXISnet, the old tax portal, no longer plays a part.

How VIES matches your VAT return

The same sales appear in both filings, in different shapes. On the VAT return, intra-Community supplies, meaning sales to businesses in other EU countries, go in box 8A for goods and box 8B for services. A quarter's three VIES statements should add up to those boxes.

Triangular deals count too. That's where goods you buy in one member state travel straight to your customer in a third. They're still intra-Community supplies, so they go on the VIES statement marked as triangular, and their value goes in box 10 of the VAT return.

Reconcile the two before you submit each VAT return. A sale zero-rated in box 8B but missing from VIES, or the reverse, is visible to both tax authorities. It's far easier to fix in the week you spot it than in reply to a query.

If you move goods, also check Intrastat. It has its own thresholds and goods-data requirements, and filing VIES doesn't complete an Intrastat report.

Fixing a filed statement

Correct it in Tax For All, under My tax and then Tax Accounts, where each filed statement has a correct-this-return option. You can fix a VAT number or an amount, delete a line, or add a sale you missed. A correction made by the end of the month following the month the statement covers is free. After that, each corrected statement carries a €15 penalty.

Add a forgotten sale by correcting the statement for the month it belongs to. Never roll it into the next month, because that misdates the sale on both sides of the exchange. Credit notes are different. Enter the reduction as a negative amount in the month you granted the credit. Treat a price increase as an extra supply in the month it arose.

How Sumly handles VIES

The statement builds itself from books you already keep. In Sumly, each customer contact stores its EU VAT number, and each sale is marked as goods or services when it's booked. So the monthly statement comes from the same records as your VAT return, and you get a reminder before the 15th. The VIES obligation sits next to your VAT period in the dashboard, which keeps the monthly rhythm in front of you.

On Base, you review the prepared statement and submit it in Tax For All yourself. On Plus, Sumly files it for you. On Premium, your Sumly certified bookkeeper reviews and submits it for you, with the VAT return. On every plan, a person files it. The software has no direct connection to government systems and never submits anything on its own. Plans start at €39 a month, and the software starts with a 30-day free trial.

Questions people ask