By letter III C 5 – S 7427 – d/19/10001 :001 v. 28.10.2020, DStR 2020, 2433, the Federal Ministry of Finance has amended Sec. 18e.1 VAT Application Decree (UStAE) and thus altered the procedure for confirmation requests for foreign VAT identification numbers provided. The changes will apply to all confirmation questions after December 31, 2020.
Sec. 18e.1 UStAE has been amended as follows:
1. In paragraph 2, sentences 3 to 5 shall provide the following:
“For inquiries on individual VAT ID Nos., proof of the qualified confirmation request carried out must be kept in the company’s system by storing the printout or adopting the result transmitted by the BZSt in a generally accepted format or as a screenshot. When carrying out simultaneous inquiries for multiple VAT ID Nos. via the interface offered by the BZSt for this purpose, the electronic response transmitted by the BZSt can be directly integrated into the system of the company and evaluated in the form of a data set. In these cases, proof of a qualified request for a VAT ID No. is provided by the data set received by the BZSt.” (Emphasis not in the original)
2. Paragraph 5 shall provide as follows:
“If a request is made by telephone, the BZSt shall in principle transmit the result of the confirmation request in writing.”