Slovakia now runs three positive VAT rates — 23%, 19% and 5% — and which one applies can change within a single transaction. This guide covers the 2025 rise, the 2026 food reclassification, and the e-invoicing mandate arriving in 2027.
Understanding Slovak DPH
Slovak VAT is daň z pridanej hodnoty, abbreviated DPH — the same abbreviation Czechia uses, from the same shared linguistic root, but the two systems have diverged sharply. Slovakia is administered by the Finančná správa (Financial Administration) under Act No. 222/2004 Coll. A registered business holds an IČ DPH beginning with the prefix SK, and Slovakia has used the euro since 2009, so no conversion step is needed on intra-eurozone invoices.
1 January 2025: 20% became 23%
The consolidation amendment raised the standard rate by three percentage points in a single step — among the largest one-off VAT increases in the EU in the past decade. It took Slovakia from below the EU average to level with Poland and ahead of Czechia, Austria and Germany. Three consequences are still working through the system in 2026:
- Stale published rates. A large share of third-party rate tables, plugin configurations and ERP tax codes still carry 20% for SK. Check before you invoice; the tax authority will not accept a stale table as a defence.
- The date of supply governs, not the invoice date. A December 2024 delivery invoiced in January 2025 was still a 20% supply. The same principle applies to advance payments: the rate attaches when the tax point arises.
- Gross-price contracts absorbed the increase. Where a contract fixed a VAT-inclusive price, the extra three points came out of the supplier's margin unless the agreement had a tax-change clause.
The 10% band disappeared, and 19% replaced it
The same law abolished the 10% reduced rate outright. A new 19% band picked up foodstuffs that fall outside the basic-food list, electricity, and the serving of low-alcohol drinks in restaurants. The 5% band survived and was actually widened — accommodation, restaurant food, books and press, and sports and fitness admission all sit there. A further extension on 1 July 2025 added gluten-free foods, more press publications and selected cultural services to the 5% list. So the headline story of 2025 was an increase, but the reduced-rate story was mixed.
Three VAT rates on one restaurant bill
Slovakia is the clearest example in the EU of a single service being split across three rates. The Financial Administration's guidance No. 7/DPH/2024/IM, in force since 1 January 2025, breaks restaurant and catering services down by what is actually served:
| What is served | Rate |
|---|
| Food, prepared or unprepared | 5% |
| Drinks of no more than 0.5% alcohol by volume | 19% |
| Drinks above 0.5% alcohol by volume | 23% |
A table that orders a main course, a mineral water and a beer generates all three bands on one receipt. For operators this is a point-of-sale configuration problem before it is a tax problem: a single blended rate applied across the bill will be wrong in both directions depending on the mix. If you are pricing a menu, calculate each line separately — and note that the food rate applies to the service of serving food, so takeaway, delivery and in-house service can each need their own analysis.
January 2026: sugar and salt moved to 23%
From 1 January 2026 Slovakia moved selected products high in sugar, salt or sweeteners out of the 19% band and up to the full 23%. The stated aim was to shift consumption as well as raise revenue, and roughly a quarter of food lines were affected. The split:
- Moved to 23%: confectionery and chocolate, biscuits, sweets and candied fruit, ice cream, jams, sweetened soft drinks and syrups, energy drinks, and salty snacks such as crisps and savoury bars.
- Kept the old rate: sugar and salt sold as raw ingredients, baby food and children's meals, dairy drinks and yoghurts, 100% juices, and foods formulated for diabetics.
The reclassification interacts with the restaurant split above, and the Financial Administration issued further clarification in early 2026 on confectionery and desserts: the same product can carry a different rate depending on whether it is bought packaged in a shop or served as part of a restaurant service. Retail and hospitality arms of the same group may legitimately apply different rates to identical stock.
Registration: the threshold that did not rise
From 1 January 2025 Slovakia switched its turnover test from twelve consecutive months to the calendar year and set two lines:
- €50,000 in a calendar year — you become a VAT payer from 1 January of the following year.
- €62,500 — registration takes effect immediately, from the day the threshold is exceeded.
The application is due within five working days of crossing. This is the detail most 2026 commentary gets wrong: a bill to raise the thresholds to €83,000 and €85,000 from July 2026 — the EU's maximum permitted level — was widely reported as though it had passed. It did not. The National Council rejected it on 7 May 2026, so €50,000 and €62,500 remain the numbers in force. Businesses established outside Slovakia get no threshold at all and must register before their first Slovak taxable supply, including the moment they place stock in a Slovak warehouse.
Filing: return, control statement, EC Sales List
The default taxable period is the calendar month. Quarterly filing is available only once you have been registered for more than twelve months and your turnover in the preceding calendar year stayed under €100,000; newly registered businesses file monthly regardless. Three filings share the same 25th of the following month deadline:
- Daňové priznanie k DPH — the VAT return itself, with payment due the same day.
- Kontrolný výkaz — the control statement, listing issued and received invoices transaction by transaction so the authority can cross-match trading partners.
- Súhrnný výkaz — the EC Sales List, covering intra-EU supplies of goods and services.
All three are filed electronically through the Financial Administration portal. Both listings are scheduled to be retired once the e-invoicing data flow described below is in place, which is the main compliance-cost argument the reform is being sold on.
IS eFaktúra: mandatory e-invoicing from January 2027
From 1 January 2027 every Slovak VAT-registered taxable person must issue and receive structured electronic invoices for domestic B2B and B2G supplies through the IS eFaktúra system. The design differs from Italy's or Poland's central-platform model in one notable way: invoices are routed through accredited intermediaries known as digitálny poštár — digital postmen — rather than passing through a single government hub.
- Format: machine-readable XML aligned with EN 16931, the European standard. A PDF or a scan will not satisfy the mandate, no matter how it is sent.
- Reporting is embedded, not periodic. Supplier data is generated at the point of issue; recipients report received-invoice data within five days. There is no separate filing deadline for the e-reporting layer.
- Voluntary phase: onboarding opened during 2026 so businesses could test integrations before the hard date.
- Direction of travel: the reform is aligned to the EU's ViDA package, which extends structured invoicing to intra-EU B2B from July 2030.
If you sell into Slovakia from another member state, the immediate obligation lands on your Slovak counterparties rather than on you — but a Slovak VAT registration of your own brings you inside the mandate, and integration work is not a fortnight's job.
Slovak VAT formulas
Everything on this page reduces to two identities. Shown here with €500 net at the 23% standard rate:
Add 23% DPH (net to gross)
Gross = Net × (1 + rate ÷ 100)
Cena s DPH = €500 + €115 = €615
Remove 23% DPH (gross to net)
Net = Gross ÷ (1 + rate ÷ 100)
Cena bez DPH = €615 ÷ 1.23 = €500
At a 23% rate the tax is 18.70% of the gross price, not 23% of it. The equivalent shares for the other Slovak bands are 15.97% at 19% and 4.76% at 5% — worth keeping on hand if you are reverse-engineering a mixed restaurant receipt line by line.
