Slovenia's headline DDV rates have not moved since 2013. What has changed — twice in the last two years — is how much of each invoice the tax authority gets to see, and that is the part that decides whether your bookkeeping is compliant in 2026.
The three DDV rates and where the lines fall
Davek na dodano vrednost — DDV — is administered by the Finančna uprava Republike Slovenije (FURS) under the VAT Act, the Zakon o davku na dodano vrednost (ZDDV-1). The standard rate is 22% and it is the default: if a supply is not explicitly listed in the annexes to the Act, it is standard-rated.
9.5% — a wide reduced band
Slovenia's reduced rate is broader than most. It covers foodstuffs and animal feed, water supply, medicines and medical equipment, passenger transport, hotel and campsite accommodation, restaurant and catering services, admission to cultural and sporting events, authors' and performers' royalties, certain works of art, the renovation and cleaning of private dwellings, and a set of labour-intensive services including hairdressing, domestic care, and minor repairs to bicycles, shoes, leather goods and clothing. Unusually for the EU, restaurant meals and hotel nights share the same reduced rate — there is no separate accommodation band.
5% — publications, and nothing else
The 5% band was created on 1 January 2020 for a single category: books, newspapers and periodicals, moved down from 9.5% and extended to the same titles supplied electronically. Two exclusions matter for publishers. A title that consists wholly or mainly of advertising does not qualify, and neither does one that consists wholly or mainly of video or audio content — both stay at 22%. A print magazine and its identical digital edition now carry the same 5%, which was the point of the change.
The sugary-drinks reclassification
On 1 January 2025 Slovenia moved beverages containing added sugar or sweeteners — and the syrups and preparations used to make them — out of the 9.5% food band and onto the standard 22% rate, as a public-health measure rather than a revenue one. Plain water and unsweetened juices keep the reduced rate. The practical effect is a till problem: two bottles that sit side by side on the same shelf and look identical to a customer now carry rates 12.5 points apart, and the product master data has to know which is which.
Registration: €60,000 since January 2025
A business established in Slovenia must register for DDV once its taxable turnover in the previous 12 months exceeds €60,000 — a threshold raised from €50,000 on 1 January 2025 when Slovenia transposed the EU small-enterprise directive. Registration below the threshold is voluntary and unlocks input-tax recovery, which is usually worth it for a business with significant purchases.
Businesses not established in Slovenia get no threshold at all: they register before making their first taxable supply. A business established outside the EU generally needs a Slovenian tax representative. The same 2025 reform brought in the cross-border SME scheme, which lets a Slovenian small business supply other member states VAT-exempt while its EU-wide turnover stays under €100,000 — and lets small businesses from other member states do the same in Slovenia. Slovenian VAT numbers take the form SI followed by eight digits and can be validated in VIES.
Filing: the DDV-O return and the ledgers behind it
Monthly filing is the default. Taxable persons with turnover under €210,000 who make no intra-EU supplies may file quarterly instead. Everything goes through the eDavki portal with a qualified digital certificate. The DDV-O return is due by the last working day of the month following the period — or by the 20th where an EU sales list (recapitulative statement) is filed for the same period.
What changed on 1 July 2025
From that date, every VAT-registered business in Slovenia must submit digital VAT ledgers alongside the DDV-O return: the output ledger listing every invoice issued in the period and the input ledger listing every invoice received. This is a step change in visibility. FURS no longer sees only the nine boxes of a summary return — it sees the transactions, which means a mismatch between what a supplier declared as output VAT and what a customer claimed as input VAT is now detectable without an audit ever being opened.
The compensation for the extra work is a pre-filled return. Submit both ledgers at least three working days before the deadline and FURS calculates the VAT due and populates the DDV-O for you. The ledgers share the return's deadline. In practice this makes ledger-capable accounting software non-optional for anyone registered in Slovenia.
Fiscal verification: the code at the foot of every receipt
Slovenia has run one of Europe's stricter receipt-fiscalisation regimes since 2 January 2016, under the Act on Fiscal Verification of Invoices adopted on 15 July 2015. Any invoice settled in cash must be transmitted to FURS at the moment it is issued; FURS validates it in real time and returns a unique invoice identifier that is printed on the receipt alongside a protective mark generated by the issuer's own certificate. That is the long alphanumeric string at the bottom of a Slovenian till receipt, and a customer can check it against FURS's records in a mobile app or on the FURS website to confirm the sale was actually declared.
Businesses issuing very few invoices may use pre-numbered receipt books instead of a connected cash register, but must then report those invoices through eDavki within ten days. Fiscal verification is about suppressing the cash economy and is entirely separate from the B2B e-invoicing mandate arriving in 2028 — the two systems coexist.
E-invoicing from 1 January 2028 — decentralised by design
The National Assembly adopted the Act on the Exchange of Electronic Invoices and Other Electronic Documents on 23 October 2025. From 1 January 2028, every business registered in Slovenia must issue e-invoices for domestic B2B transactions.
Slovenia deliberately avoided the centralised clearance model. Invoices travel through one of four routes — a licensed e-route provider, a direct exchange arrangement between two parties, the international Peppol network, or a free miniCheckout application aimed at the smallest businesses — and there is no obligation to report them to FURS in real time. An earlier draft that would have required reporting within eight days did not survive into the adopted text, which is a significant simplification compared with the reporting-plus-invoicing regimes elsewhere in the region.
One point catches people out: a PDF emailed to a customer is not an e-invoice. The obligation is to exchange structured, machine-readable data — typically XML — that a recipient's system can process without a human reading it. Businesses still emailing PDFs have until the end of 2027 to change.
Reverse charge, domestic and cross-border
For cross-border B2B supplies within the EU the customer self-assesses in the normal way: issue the invoice without DDV, quote both VAT identification numbers and mark it as a reverse-charge supply. Slovenia also operates a domestic reverse charge under Article 76.a of ZDDV-1, which shifts the liability to a VAT-registered buyer on construction work, waste and scrap metal, transfers of immovable property where the option to tax has been exercised, and greenhouse gas emission allowances. Getting this wrong on a Slovenian construction invoice is a common and expensive error: the supplier charges 22% that the customer then cannot recover, because the VAT was never due from the supplier in the first place.
Slovenian VAT calculation formulas
At 22% the difference between dividing and subtracting is large. Taking 22% off a €122.00 gross price gives €26.84 — 22% more VAT than the price actually contains.
Add 22% DDV (net to gross)
Formula: Gross = Net × (1 + VAT rate)
VAT = €100.00 × 0.22 = €22.00
Gross = €100.00 + €22.00 = €122.00
Remove 22% DDV (gross to net)
Formula: Net = Gross ÷ (1 + VAT rate)
Net = €122.00 ÷ 1.22 = €100.00
VAT = €122.00 − €100.00 = €22.00
The VAT share of a 22% gross price is 22 ÷ 122 = 18.03%. For the reduced rates divide by 1.095 or 1.05 — a €109.50 restaurant bill contains €9.50 of DDV, and a €105.00 book order contains exactly €5.00.
