In brief
- A company registered under § 7 or § 7a of the Slovak VAT Act has a VAT ID but is not a VAT payer.
- On 23 Sep 2026 that was 79,803 of 315,482 registrations — one in four.
- VIES reports its VAT ID as valid, so it cannot answer whether a company is a payer.
- It decides whether the domestic reverse charge applies and whether you can deduct VAT from a supplier's invoice.
The invoice shows a VAT ID and VIES reports it valid — so the company is a VAT payer. Not necessarily. Slovak VAT law has a registration that gives a company a VAT ID without making it a VAT payer, and it applies to roughly one in four companies with a VAT ID.
Who is a VAT payer
A taxable person established in Slovakia becomes a payer under § 4 of the VAT Act — as a rule once its turnover for a calendar year exceeds €50,000, or at the moment it exceeds €62,500 within the current year. Groups registered under § 4b and foreign persons registered under § 5 are payers too. A payer charges VAT on its invoices and may deduct it on purchases.
Registration under § 7 and § 7a
A company that is not a payer must still register for VAT in two cross-border situations:
- § 7 — when it acquires goods from another EU member state worth €14,000 in a calendar year (it may also register voluntarily earlier).
- § 7a — when it receives a service from a person in another member state on which it must pay the tax itself, or supplies such a service to another member state. Typically advertising on Facebook or Google, software and licences from the EU, or services for foreign clients.
Such a company gets a VAT ID so it can trade within the EU, but does not become a VAT payer: it charges no VAT on domestic invoices and cannot deduct it. It pays tax only on the cross-border purchases it registered for.
This is not an edge case. On 23 September 2026 the Financial Administration's list held 315,482 current VAT registrations, of which 74,671 under § 7a and 5,132 under § 7 — 79,803 in total, or 25%.
Why VIES cannot tell
The European Commission's VIES checks whether a VAT ID is valid for intra-EU trade. A VAT ID issued under § 7 or § 7a is valid, so VIES answers "valid" — and nothing more. It does not say whether the company is a VAT payer at home, so invoicing software relying on VIES alone easily marks it as one.
The Financial Administration publishes the difference in its list of VAT-registered subjects: the registration paragraph for each, and for payers the date they became one.
What it changes on an invoice
- The domestic reverse charge (for example on construction work or scrap metal) applies under § 69(12) only when both supplier and customer are payers under § 4, § 4b, § 4c or § 5. If your customer is registered under § 7a, the reverse charge does not apply and you charge VAT normally.
- An invoice from a supplier registered under § 7 or § 7a should carry no VAT — it is not a payer. If it does, you cannot deduct it: § 49(2)(a) allows deduction of tax charged by another payer.
- Your customer and supplier records should hold not just the VAT ID but whether the company is a payer, and under which paragraph it is registered.
The status changes
A company registered under § 7a becomes a payer when it crosses the turnover threshold, and the Financial Administration can strike a payer off the list. Checking at the first invoice is not enough. When a company is struck off the VAT register or registers for VAT, we report it in the change feed, by webhook or in the morning email — for every company you watch. A change of registration paragraph (for example from § 7a to § 4) is not reported as a change — every check returns the current paragraph.