Per-line VAT: why per-document VAT breaks on a mixed-rate Cyprus receipt.

01One receipt, three rates

Take the most ordinary document in a Cyprus pile: a supermarket receipt. Bottled water at 5%. Cleaning supplies at 19%. A loaf from the basket of basic goods that has been zero-rated. One gross total at the bottom, rounded to the nearest five cents because the customer paid cash.

A tool that works per document has to pick a rate for that slip. Whichever it picks is wrong for two of the three lines. Multiply by a quarter's worth of receipts from a restaurant, a shop or a site office, and the input VAT on the return is a number nobody can reconstruct. The five bands are the easy part; the hard part is that they appear together.

02The wording problem

Before a rate can be applied, something else has to be decided: is the printed figure inclusive of VAT or exclusive? On a Greek receipt the answer is a phrase, «ΦΠΑ συμπεριλαμβάνεται» or «πλέον ΦΠΑ». On an invoice from a German supplier it is «inkl. MwSt.»; from a Turkish one, «KDV dahil»; from a French one, «TTC». Read an inclusive total as a net subtotal and the VAT is charged twice; read a net as a gross and it vanishes.

The phrase has to be read in the language it was written in, and it has to be kept: an inspector matching the workbook to the original wants to see the words the supplier printed, not a translation of them. That is why Pileform records the pricing mode per document and keeps the line descriptions in the source language. The same applies to reverse charge, which is also a wording: an EU supplier's invoice under Article 196 says so, in its own language, and that sentence is what stops the invoice being posted as Cyprus input VAT. See the reverse charge guide for the mechanics.

03What deciding per line actually involves

Per-line VAT is four steps, in this order, and the order matters.

• Transcribe, never correct. Every line's description, quantity, unit price and printed rate are read exactly as printed. A rate that is printed is never overridden; a rate that is not printed is inferred and marked for a human.
• Reconcile in integer cents. The line sums are checked against the subtotal and the total with deterministic arithmetic. Floating-point totals drift; cents do not.
• Put the rounding where it belongs. The five-cent cash rounding at a Cyprus till is a real gap between the lines and the printed total. It goes in its own Adjustment column, so the workbook agrees with the paper without fudging a line.
• Check plausibility, then flag. A 19% line on a document from a 24% jurisdiction is flagged, not silently corrected. The flag is the point: a human decides, and the decision is recorded.

None of these steps is a model guessing a number. The AI reads text and classifies accounts; every figure is computed. That is the difference between a tool that quotes an accuracy percentage and one that shows you which rows to look at.

04Why the 3% band is the tell

Cyprus introduced a 3% super-reduced rate in July 2023 for books, magazines, certain medicines and a handful of other supplies. It is a small band, and that is exactly why it is a useful test of any tool: a product that still lists four Cyprus rates was either built before July 2023 and not revisited, or was built somewhere else and had a Cyprus flag added. Ask any capture or ledger tool to show you a 3% line on a mixed receipt, reconciled to the printed gross, and you will learn most of what you need to know.

Pileform applies all five bands per line, across fifty-four other jurisdictions in the same pile, and drafts the VAT return from the posted books for a person to check and submit. The Cyprus VAT page has the whole chain, from the pile to the return.