Changes in Intrastat reporting from 1 January 2022

Simplified reporting

One significant change is the introduction of the possible simplified reporting, where the reporting unit submits a single Intrastat report with the specified reference period, direction of movement and type of ZH sentence. The simplification can be applied by the reporting units that do not exceed the total value of CZK 20 million for the direction of arrivals or dispatches (separately for each direction) in the current or previous calendar year, but have achieved the threshold level of CZK 12 million for the arrivals or dispatches.

Another condition for the use of the simplified reporting is that the reporting unit must not trade in commodities specified in the Czech Statistical Office’s Communication on the list of goods that are not intended for simplified reporting (hereinafter referred to as ‘the CSO Communication‘). The exact list of goods should be published at the turn of 2021/2022, while it should contain commodities such as oil, fuels, etc.

If the reporting unit later exceeds the threshold of CZK 20 million or begins trading in commodities pursuant to the CSO Communication, it will have to start reporting the data in the standard manner.

Extension of scope of reported data

Now the scope of data that will be reported in the Intrastat report has been extended to include: 

• information on the country of origin for the dispatched goods (currently the country of origin is only reported on the arrivals). If the origin of the goods is unknown, the reporting unit will use the code ’QU‘; and
• the tax identification number of the buyer (counterparty) in the direction of dispatches. If the counterparty does not have this number or the reporting unit does not know it, it will use the code ’QV123’. 

Changes to transaction nature codes

The transaction nature codes will also see a number of changes. For example, transactions reported under code 92 will now be reported under one of the codes 31, 32 or 12.

The complete changes are clearly collected in the converter that you can find here. 

Limit for small consignments

The limit for small consignments that can be reported in the simplified manner is increasing from the current EUR 200 to EUR 400. The reporting units still have the possibility of reporting small consignments in the standard manner. 

Rounding of supplementary units of measurement 

Rounding will also be partially unified. For supplementary units of measurement, such as litres, metres or grams with a value greater than 1, mathematical rounding to whole numbers will now also be applied just like for weights. The value of the supplementary units of measurement lower than 1 will continue to be reported with a precision of three decimal places. 

Reference period 

Another change applies to the reference period. From 1 January 2022, if the time lag between the receipt or dispatch of goods and the taxable supply is longer than two calendar months, the reference period is the month in which the receipt or dispatch of goods took place.  

Credit notes 

If the buyer is returned (credited) the entire purchase price for the supplied goods, even in relation to individual supplied goods (e.g., 1 washer is credited from a delivery of 20 washers), it is now necessary to correct the Intrastat report and decrease the originally reported value of the goods by the amount of the credit note or to erase the given Intrastat line. In such a case the tolerance limit of 5% for corrections is not applied. The data is not corrected additionally in cases where all or part of a consignment of goods is returned. Such returns continue to be reported in the period of the return of the consignment, usually indicated by transaction code ‘21’.  

Change of terminology 

There are some slightly non-systemic changes in terminology. Instead of the term dispatches currently in use, the export of goods to another Member State of the European Union will now be used and instead of arrivals, the import of goods from another Member State of the European Union will be used. In order to maintain the clarity of the article, we have decided not to use these new terms here. 

The Czech Statistical Office has included all the above changes in the manual for 2022, which is already available for download in Czech here. 

We would be glad to offer our assistance in this matter to discuss your concrete situation with you.