If you sell to customers in other European Union countries, sooner or later you need the table of VAT rates by EU country. Not out of curiosity: because once you exceed the distance-selling threshold, you stop applying the Spanish 21% rate and have to charge the rate of the country where your buyer lives. This is the updated table of the 27 standard rates, with what you need to know to use it properly in a WooCommerce store.

Table of standard VAT rates in the EU

These are the standard rates —the ones applied by default to most goods and services— in the 27 member states:

Country	Standard rate
Germany	19 %
Austria	20 %
Belgium	21 %
Bulgaria	20 %
Cyprus	19 %
Croatia	25 %
Denmark	25 %
Slovakia	23 %
Slovenia	22 %
Spain	21 %
Estonia	24 %
Finland	25,5 %
France	20 %
Greece	24 %
Hungary	27 %
Ireland	23 %
Italy	22 %
Latvia	21 %
Lithuania	21 %
Luxembourg	17 %
Malta	18 %
Netherlands	21 %
Poland	23 %
Portugal	23 %
Czech Republic	21 %
Romania	21 %
Sweden	25 %

The range goes from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary: a ten-point difference on the same product. If you sell to several countries and apply the same rate to all of them, either you are undercharging and paying the difference yourself, or you are overcharging and making your product more expensive than the local competition.

Rates are set by each state within the limits of the EU directive and change with each tax reform. The official, always up-to-date source is the European Commission VAT rates page: if you are going to make a decision with tax consequences, check it there.

When you apply another country’s rate

Not always. The rule depends on who you sell to and how much you sell:

• You sell to a private customer in another EU country and invoice less than €10,000 per year in total to the whole EU. You apply your national VAT, 21% if you are in Spain.
• You exceed €10,000 or voluntarily register for OSS. You apply the rate of the destination country. That threshold is single and aggregated for all intra-EU distance sales, not one per country.
• You sell to a business with a valid VAT ID in the register of intra-EU operators. The transaction is exempt under reverse charge: you do not charge VAT and the buyer settles it in their country.

The third case is the one that moves the most money and the one that is worst controlled, because it depends on the VAT ID being real. We cover it in the guide to intra-EU VAT in WooCommerce.

Why the standard rate is not always the one you pay

Each country also keeps reduced and super-reduced rates for specific categories: food, books, medicines, transport. And they do not match between countries or cover the same products.

For a store, this means the table above is the starting point, not the end. If you sell books to Portugal or food to France, the applicable rate is not the standard one. Check the specific category before configuring anything.

Territories that do not follow the rest

The Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla are outside the EU VAT territory: there, IGIC and IPSI apply. And there are more territorial exceptions within other states. A Spanish store selling to the Canary Islands does not apply 21%, even if the customer is Spanish.

How this is managed in WooCommerce

WooCommerce includes tax rates by country and tax classes, so technically you can load all 27 rates manually. The problem is not loading them: it is keeping them updated and knowing when to apply each one.

What WooCommerce does not do on its own is track your distance sales to warn you before you cross €10,000, or check whether the VAT ID you are given actually exists. That is where you need a layer on top: that is what EHERO Woo VAT solves, and it also keeps the rates updated with the plugin.

Three mistakes that cost money

Loading the table once and forgetting about it. Rates change. Finland went up to 25.5%, Estonia to 24%, Slovakia to 23%. A table from two years ago is no longer valid.

Confusing the threshold with one per country. The €10,000 is the total of your distance sales to the whole EU, not for each destination.

Applying the standard rate to the entire catalog. If you sell products with a reduced rate in some country, you are overcharging and losing competitiveness against the local seller.

An example with numbers

You sell a product for €100 (tax base) from Spain. Depending on who buys it and from where:

• Spanish private customer: €100 + 21% = €121.
• German private customer, below the threshold: €100 + 21% = €121. You still apply Spanish VAT.
• German private customer, above the threshold or with OSS: €100 + 19% = €119. Those €19 are declared to Germany.
• Hungarian private customer, above the threshold: €100 + 27% = €127. Your product is 6.6% more expensive than in Germany without you changing the price.
• German business with a valid VAT ID: €100. Exempt under reverse charge.

That last case is the most costly if done wrong: if the VAT ID was not valid and you applied the exemption, the €21 you did not charge come out of your margin.

The displayed price also changes

If your store shows prices including VAT, the same product appears at €119 in Germany and €127 in Hungary. That is fiscally correct, but it is worth deciding carefully: some stores prefer to set the final price and absorb the rate difference so they do not have a catalog with different prices by country.

Rates change, and more than it seems

In recent years several have moved: Finland raised its standard rate, Estonia raised it twice in a short time, and Slovakia changed it in its reform. The practical consequence is that a table copied from an article from two years ago is almost certainly wrong.

That is why the sensible approach is not to memorize the table, but to have the store connected to a source that updates. If you keep the rates manually in WooCommerce tax settings, set yourself an annual reminder to review them at least.