Adjustments as from 2022: Nature of transaction codes and changes in Intrastat reports

The national statistical institutes will implement EU Regulation 2019/2152 on business statistics as from 2022. Most important adjustment: The nature of transaction codes are changing. This applies to all export and import declarations. Furthermore, additional fields in the Intrastat reports will become mandatory. AEB's applications will implement the new requirements in due time.

Nature of transaction

The new nature of transaction codes must be reported in customs declarations as from January 2022 and in intra-Community trade reports as from reporting month January 2022.

For foreign trade statistics reporting, use the nature of transaction codes within the items in the financial data overview. The customs authority then automatically transmits them from your export and import declarations to the national statistical institute.

Translating existing nature of transaction codes to the new codes for reporting can be challenging for companies. As from 2022, two-digit codes will always be requested, which must be differentiated depending on the business transaction. The new nature of transaction codes are defined in EU Regulation 2020/1197 in Annex I, Part C for the classifications described in Table 1.

Intrastat reports

In addition, two more fields will become mandatory in the reports for Intrastat dispatch:

• Country of origin of goods
• Recipient's VAT identification number (VAT ID)

With the requirement to specify the VAT ID, it is no longer possible to summarize the report across different business partners. As a result, the volume of reports should increase significantly. In special constellations, e.g. in the case of chain transactions, triangular trade, or trade with private consumers, it may be necessary to code the recipient's VAT ID in a specific manner.

• Familiarize yourself with the changes and check necessary adjustments in the ERP system incl. for data transferred to AEB applications via interface.

Nature of transaction codes in the AEB applications

The national reporting procedures will start operating on January 1, 2022.

If you use export or import applications from AEB, please note that you may have to check and adapt existing templates. During data transfer from host systems, the code applicable at the relevant time must then be reported in relation to the key date for the nature of transaction.

The reporting format depends on the country. In the Netherlands and Sweden, for example, only the first digit is used in customs declarations. To find out which code you may use for the nature of transaction, see the websites of the national statistics and customs authorities: