⚠️ This article explains the law in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In your country, different rules apply.
That applies to this text only, not to the software. Zirko calculates with the VAT rates of your country and knows the mandatory invoice details required there.
The most common question first: in this tab you set nothing. It is a list to look things up in. Which rate ends up on an invoice is decided by you at the customer and in the totals section of the document.
Settings → Accounting → Tax rates.
What is in there
At the top the rates of your business country, below that, expandable, the rates of all the other countries Zirko works in. Each country carries a date: “As at: …”.
Zirko maintains these VAT rates centrally, they cannot be edited. We reconcile the rates of the EU countries monthly against two independent sources, the other countries every six months. All details without guarantee; Zirko provides no tax advice.
For Germany 19 % and 7 % are listed there, plus the zero-percent cases: intra-community supply, tax group, photovoltaics, reverse charge, small business scheme, sale of land, and export. Austria carries 20 %, 13 % and 10 %, Switzerland 8.1 %, 3.8 % and 2.6 %.
Old rates — the German 16 % and 5 % from 2020, the Swiss 7.7 % — are deliberately not in the list. They belong to documents from back then, not to a new invoice.
Where the rate on an invoice comes from
Every new document already comes with its rate, in this order:
- Small business? If the Small business scheme switch is on in the DATEV tab, its 0 % rate is filled in.
- Otherwise the customer's rate. Every customer gets the standard rate of your country when created. If you permanently work differently for them, with reverse charge for example, you change it there once.
- Otherwise the standard rate of your country: 19 % in Germany, 20 % in Austria, 8.1 % in Switzerland.
You change it in the totals section under USt (Switzerland: MWST), for the whole document — not per line item. If you change the recipient in a draft, an untouched rate moves along; a rate you chose on purpose stays. Without a rate no document with totals goes out, not even a quote, and the editor shows Tax rate missing.
One exception: a cancellation invoice, an invoice correction and a reversal document show — already in the draft — the tax note and the paper format of the invoice they correct, not the current status of your business. If you have changed your tax status since then, the situation from back then still applies to that one document.
Reverse charge and the small business scheme
Neither is a switch, both are a VAT rate at 0 % — and rightly so: the reason has to be on the invoice, not just the zero.
- Reverse charge (§ 13b UStG in Germany, construction work under § 19 Abs. 1a in Austria) is chosen at the customer or in the totals section of the document. Zirko enters the matching category into the e-invoice while doing so.
- The small business scheme (§ 19 UStG, in Austria § 6 Abs. 1 Z 27 UStG 1994, in Switzerland Art. 10 Abs. 2 lit. a MWSTG) is likewise available as a rate, in every country except the USA. On top of that there is a switch “Small business scheme” in the DATEV tab. It fills this rate into every new document — ahead of the customer's rate, because reverse charge does not apply to a small business. It also controls which revenue account is posted to, and it feeds the check of the mandatory details on your documents.
In Switzerland the document then shows no tax. A business that is not entered in the VAT register must not refer to the tax on its invoices (Art. 27 Abs. 1 MWSTG). With this rate — and, with the switch on, with any 0 % rate — the document and the editor show neither a tax line nor a net line, only the total. The Payment statement has no tax column either, as long as none of the interim invoices shows tax. If you choose a rate with tax anyway, it is printed on the document — and you owe it (Abs. 2).
In Italy the tax regime decides. There the small business scheme is the flat-rate regime (regime forfettario). If a Tax regime is set under Settings → Company → Business details, it applies; only when it is empty does the switch count. The pre-filled rate, the mandatory note on the document and the regime in the e-invoice all follow from it.
Creating your own rates
That is possible only for businesses in the USA, because the rates there differ by town and district and no central list can map them. A rate of your own there consists of up to four named components, together at most 30 %.
For all other business countries there are no rates of your own.
Canada is the only case with tax areas: there the list is arranged by province.