Germany

Germany’s tax system is administered by the Federal Central Tax Office (Bundeszentralamt für Steuern, BZSt). As an EU member state, Germany follows the EU VAT Directive with locally adapted rates.

VAT (Umsatzsteuer, USt) applies at standard and reduced rates. The reduced rate covers food, books, newspapers, public transport, and cultural events.

Businesses are identified by their Umsatzsteuer-Identifikationsnummer (USt-IdNr) in the format DE followed by 9 digits for cross-border transactions, and by their Steuernummer (tax number) in regional formats for domestic purposes.

Germany supports credit notes for invoice corrections. E-invoicing is progressively becoming mandatory, with XRechnung as the standard for B2G transactions and ZUGFeRD/Factur-X widely used for B2B.

Base Details

Key	Value
Tax Country Code	DE
Currency	EUR
Base Time Zone	Europe/Berlin

Tax Categories

Code	Name	Title
VAT	VAT	Value Added Tax

VAT Rates

Rate	Keys	Name	Percents	Description
general	standard	General rate	19%	For the majority of sales of goods and services: it applies to all products or services for which no other rate is expressly provided.
reduced	standard	Reduced rate	7%	Applicable in particular to basic foodstuffs, books and magazines, cultural events, hotel accommodations, public transportation, medical products, or home renovation.

Correction Definitions

Auto-generation of corrective invoices or credit and debit notes is supported.

Invoice Types

The types of invoices that can be created with a preceding definition:

• credit-note

Scenarios

Scenarios attach notes and extensions to a document when its filters match. Read more about scenarios.

bill/invoice

Tags	Categories	Output
reverse-charge	VAT	{   “note”: {     “cat”: “VAT”,     “key”: “reverse-charge”,     “text”: “Reverse Charge / Umkehr der Steuerschuld.”   } }

Validation Rules

Validation rules check each struct against a set of assertions and report any failures with a unique code and message. Read more about validation.

bill.Invoice

Field	Test	Validation Code / Message
supplier	Context: regime in [DE] Has tax ID code or identity with ‘de-tax-number’ key	GOBL-DE-BILL-INVOICE-01 Invoice DE supplier must have either tax ID code or identity with ‘de-tax-number’ key

org.Identity

Field	Test	Validation Code / Message
code	Is tax number Matches ^(\d/\d/\d|\d/\d/\d|\d/\d/\d)$	GOBL-DE-ORG-IDENTITY-01 German tax number code must be in valid format

tax.Identity

Field	Test	Validation Code / Message
code	Code in [DE] Valid	GOBL-DE-TAX-IDENTITY-01 Invalid German VAT identity code