Erhvervelsesmoms Explained: How Danish Businesses Self-Account for EU Purchases

Erhvervelsesmoms is a mechanism where the buyer — not the seller — is responsible for calculating and reporting the VAT on cross-border EU B2B transactions. It exists because the seller, located in another EU country, cannot easily charge Danish VAT to a Danish buyer. Instead, the seller issues an invoice with no VAT, and the Danish buyer self-assesses the VAT at the Danish rate (25% in most cases), reports it as both output VAT (salgsmoms) and input VAT (koebsmoms), and claims the input deduction if the purchase is for taxable activities.

The net cash effect is usually zero — 25% charged and 25% deducted cancel out. But both entries must appear on the momsangivelse, and the calculated amount must appear in specific rubriks depending on whether the purchase was for varer (goods) or ydelser (services). Failure to report it creates an imbalance that SKAT's reconciliation algorithms flag immediately.

Erhvervelsesmoms is codified in Momsloven §46, which establishes the reverse charge principle for B2B intra-EU trade. The §46 obligation applies when: the supplier is registered for VAT in another EU member state, the buyer is a VAT-registered Danish business, the transaction is between businesses (not B2C), and the goods or services are delivered for use in Denmark. The rules apply automatically — you cannot opt out, and the supplier is required to check your CVR number via VIES before issuing a zero-VAT invoice.

Importantly, §46 also applies to services purchased from non-EU suppliers if the place of supply is Denmark — for example, software services from a US provider that uses your Danish billing address. This is a frequent source of errors because the invoice comes from outside the EU and businesses mistakenly assume reverse charge doesn't apply. Moms Autopilot checks place-of-supply rules automatically and flags any missed reverse charge entries.

Erhvervelsesmoms applies in many everyday scenarios most Danish SMBs encounter monthly. The most common are B2B software subscriptions from other EU countries: Google Workspace from Ireland, Microsoft 365 from Ireland, Shopify from Ireland, Slack from Ireland, Notion from Ireland (you can see the pattern — Ireland is the most common EU headquarters for US software companies selling into the EU). Each of these generates a zero-VAT invoice addressed to your Danish business, and each must be self-accounted at 25% Danish VAT.

Other common scenarios include: purchasing physical goods from German or Dutch suppliers, hiring a Swedish consultant for a project delivered in Denmark, renting equipment from a French supplier for a Danish installation, and buying advertising services from Facebook Ireland, LinkedIn Ireland, or TikTok Ireland. All of these are subject to §46 reverse charge, and all must appear in dual-reporting format on your momsangivelse.

Here's exactly how the dual-reporting works on your momsangivelse. Suppose you buy Google Workspace for DKK 1,000 from Google Ireland. The invoice arrives with no VAT. You post the expense in e-conomic at DKK 1,000 against your software expense account. Then you must create two additional VAT entries: DKK 250 (25% of 1,000) as salgsmoms (output VAT) in rubrik A ydelser or B depending on type, and DKK 250 as koebsmoms (input VAT) against the same expense. Both entries appear on the momsangivelse — the salgsmoms adds to your VAT liability, the koebsmoms subtracts from it, and the net effect is zero if you have full deduction rights.

Specifically on the momsangivelse, you report: Moms af ydelseskoeb i udlandet (the self-assessed VAT amount), and for goods you report Moms af varekoeb i udlandet. These are then mirrored in rubrik A varer, rubrik A ydelser, or rubrik B depending on the transaction type. Moms Autopilot generates all four entries automatically from a single e-conomic posting, so you never have to remember the rubrik mapping.

The three most common erhvervelsesmoms errors SKAT sees are: missing the self-assessment entirely (the business treats the zero-VAT invoice as if no VAT applies), reporting only one side of the dual entry (creating a momsangivelse imbalance), and miscategorising varer vs ydelser (which affects which rubrik is used). Each error is detectable by SKAT because the momsangivelse figures won't reconcile against the annual regnskab.

Moms Autopilot detects all three automatically. When an EU supplier invoice arrives in e-conomic, the system: validates the CVR/VAT number via VIES, classifies the transaction as varer or ydelser based on the chart of accounts, generates both the salgsmoms and koebsmoms entries at the correct rate, and maps them to the correct rubrik. You see the result on a single preview screen and can override any classification with a click.