VAT number and VAT certificate in Malta: what each is for

**A mason in Mosta — a bennej running his own small firm — orders 14,200 euro of tiles and sanitary ware from a supplier in Catania. He is registered under article 11, he gives the supplier his registration number, and the supplier cannot validate it. So the supplier charges Italian VAT at 22 per cent: 3,124 euro, paid in Italy, recoverable nowhere. Had he held the right number, the same pallet would have cost him 2,556 euro of Maltese tax — and under a different registration, nothing at all.**

Malta is an island with a construction industry, which means a great deal of what gets fixed to a Maltese wall was bought in another member state. That makes the question of which number a Maltese trade business holds more expensive here than in a country where the builders' merchant is down the road.

The tax in question is taxxa fuq il-valur miżjud in Maltese and VAT in English, and only the English form appears on the paperwork — the registration certificate, the return and the number itself are all issued in English. So the word you say and the word you print are different, and only one of them is a taxxa the merchant in Catania will recognise.

You can hold more than one number, and they do not mean the same thing

The second line is the one that costs money abroad. Inside Malta the difference is invisible — your customer sees a number either way. Outside it, a supplier who cannot confirm a valid identification number has no basis to zero-rate the sale, so he charges his own country's VAT and you pay it at his rate, not ours. Which registration you hold is settled in Article 11 VAT in Malta, or Article 10: which is cheaper; this article is about what follows from it once material starts crossing water.

The threshold that has nothing to do with your turnover

Article 12 has its own ceiling, and it is not the 35,000 euro everyone knows. A business that is not registered under article 10 must register under article 12 once its intra-community acquisitions of goods pass 10,000 euro in a calendar year.

Two limits belong in the same breath as that figure:

• It covers goods only. For services received from a supplier in another member state where the place of supply is Malta, there is no threshold. One engineering report, one design fee, one software subscription from another member state can require the registration from the first euro.
• It is a calendar-year figure, and it counts purchases, not profit. A single pallet of sanitary ware takes a small firm past it.

Checking the other side's number before you rely on it

There are two directions, and both run through the same free service.

When you buy, the supplier will check your number. If it comes back invalid he will charge his own VAT, and by the time you see it on the delivery note the decision has been made.

When you sell goods across a border — a Maltese firm shipping material to a customer in another member state — the zero rate for an intra-community supply under the Fifth Schedule depends on the customer's number being valid. A wrong number does not make the supply exempt; it makes it a supply on which you should have charged 18 per cent.

The service is VIES, and the discipline is one line long: save the confirmation with the date on it, in the job file. VIES answers for today. A number that was valid in March and cancelled in June is precisely the case where the record of when you asked is the only thing standing between you and the tax.

This is where a customer record earns its place. In Zirko the VAT identification number sits on the customer rather than being typed into each document, so it reaches the invoice in the same form every time and a correction reaches every document written afterwards. What Zirko does not do is validate the number against VIES for you, and it should not pretend to: a check that ran at some unknown moment is worse than no check, because it looks like evidence.

The certificate, and what it is actually good for

The VAT certificate is the evidence that the registration exists and which article it sits under. In practice it is asked for at one moment: when a main contractor puts a new subcontractor on his books, usually alongside the contractor's licence and the insurance policy — the same folder described in The BCA contractor licence in Malta: three activities, two years.

What it does not do is say anything about turnover, solvency or standing. It identifies a registration. A contractor who treats it as a reference has misread it.

What goes on the document itself

The Twelfth Schedule lists the name, address and VAT identification number of both supplier and customer among the particulars of a tax invoice. So:

• Your own number goes on everything you issue.
• The customer's number goes on a tax invoice, because the customer is by definition a registered person.
• On a fiscal receipt there is no customer number, because the customer is not registered — which is exactly why the status has to be known before the document is written. The two documents and the test between them are in The VAT book in Malta: fiscal receipt or tax invoice.

One pallet, three routes, and the money each one costs

The Catania order again — 14,200 euro of tiles and sanitary ware before tax — under the three registrations a Maltese firm might hold.

Route one: article 11, no article 12 registration, purchases under the ceiling. The supplier cannot zero-rate, so he charges Italian VAT at 22 per cent. 3,124 euro, paid in Italy. It is not Maltese input tax and there is nothing to deduct it against.

Route two: article 11 with an article 12 registration. The supplier zero-rates the sale as an intra-community supply. The buyer accounts for Maltese VAT on the acquisition at 18 per cent — 2,556 euro — and pays it to the Maltese authority. He deducts none of it, because an article 11 business deducts no input tax. 568 euro cheaper than route one, purely because the Maltese rate is four points below the Italian one.

Route three: article 10. The supplier zero-rates. The buyer accounts for the same 2,556 euro and deducts the same 2,556 euro in the same return. The pallet costs him 14,200 euro. Nothing.

The gap between the first and the last line is 3,124 euro on a single order, and none of it is a matter of judgement — it is the arithmetic of two rates and one registration. A firm that buys a third of its turnover in material from across the water and stays on article 11 for the sake of a cheaper quote to homeowners is paying for that quote once a pallet.

---

Position as at 24 September 2026. This article describes the law and is not tax advice. The 10,000 euro acquisition ceiling is a figure in the Maltese Act rather than an EU-wide constant, and the rate another member state charges you is its own; VIES tells you what a number is on the day you ask, not what it was on the day you invoiced, so print the confirmation with its date and keep it with the job.

What Zirko does here: the VAT identification number lives on the customer and reaches every document from there, in one form, and a correction reaches the documents written after it. What Zirko does not do is tell you whether you need an article 12 registration — that follows from what you bought and from where, and it is a question for you and your accountant before the order goes in, not after the delivery note arrives.