German Umsatzsteuer at 19% and 7%

What this works out

German Umsatzsteuer, in both directions. Netto in, brutto out — or a brutto price in and the tax worked back out of it, which is a division rather than a subtraction and is the arithmetic most people get wrong.

The table underneath applies the same amount in every German band at once, with the VAT fraction for each: the share of a brutto price that is tax, in lowest terms.

The bands, and the honest thing about the fractions

Standard, 19%, since 1 January 2007. Reduced, 7%, since 1 July 1983 — the longest-unchanged rate in the system, and the reason a German reduced-rate figure from four decades ago is still arithmetically current. Solar, 0%, added by section 12(3) in 2023 for modules and storage supplied to residential and public buildings, so a householder installing panels pays no tax rather than paying it and reclaiming it. That is a genuine zero rate in a country that has essentially none otherwise.

Here is the part other calculators skip. The VAT fraction at 19% is 19/119, and it does not reduce — 19 is prime and does not divide 119, which is 7 × 17. At 7% it is 7/107, and that does not reduce either. British guidance makes the VAT fraction sound like a neat trick because 20% happens to give one sixth; in Germany there is no tidy fraction at either rate, and a page claiming otherwise is rounding a fraction rather than reducing it.

The 2026 change to restaurant food

From 1 January 2026 restaurant and catering services are reduced-rated under section 12(2) number 15 of the Umsatzsteuergesetz. That is not a new rate — the supply moved into the 7% band that already existed — which is why it is written here and not in the rate table.

Beverages were deliberately excluded, and that is the half that decides real bills. Food served in a restaurant is 7%; the drinks served with it stay at 19%, so one bill has to be split and taxed twice. Milk-based drinks with a high enough milk content are treated as dairy and follow the food rate, which is how a latte and a cola on the same table end up in different bands.

The change also removed a long-standing oddity: the same dish had been 7% taken away, as a supply of goods, and 19% eaten in, as a service. And unlike the 2020 to 2023 reduction, which was temporary relief with an expiry date, this one is an amendment to the Act with no scheduled end.

Before you read on

From January 2026 a meal eaten in a German restaurant is reduced-rated at 7%. What rate is the cola served with it?

• A7% — it arrived with the food.

  Beverages were explicitly excluded from the change, which is the half that decides real bills.

• B19% — beverages were left out.

  Yes, so one bill has to be split and taxed twice.

• C0% — drinks are treated as an ancillary supply.

  There is no zero rate for that. Germany applies 0% to domestic solar installations and to very little else.

19%. Section 12(2) number 15 UStG moved restaurant and catering services into the existing 7% band from 1 January 2026, but beverages were deliberately excluded — so the food is 7% and the drink beside it is 19%, on one bill. The exception is worth knowing: milk-based drinks with a high enough milk content are treated as dairy and follow the food rate, which is how a latte and a cola on the same table end up in different bands.

The method

Adding is a multiplication. Removing is a division: a brutto price of €297.50 including 19% is 119% of the netto, so the netto is €297.50 divided by 1.19. The equivalent shortcut is the VAT fraction, 19/119 of the brutto.

Only the VAT is rounded, and the third figure is derived from the other two, so netto and tax always add back to the price actually charged. Rounding all three independently produces invoices whose lines do not sum to their own total.

Rounding is half up to the cent, always. There is no option, and that absence is deliberate: HMRC grants invoice traders a concession to round the tax down, and German invoicing has no equivalent to cite. Offering the switch here because a sibling tool has one would be inventing a rule, which is worse than not offering a feature.

The arithmetic is decimal rather than binary floating point. 19% of €13.50 is exactly €2.565 and rounds to €2.57, but the nearest double sits fractionally below it, so a naive implementation reports €2.56 — one cent, on a page whose whole output is a tax figure.

A worked example

Adding. €250 netto at the standard rate:

VAT	€47.50
Netto	€250.00
Brutto	€297.50
VAT fraction	19/119

Getting back to €250 from €297.50 is a division by 1.19, not a 19% subtraction: taking 19% off €297.50 gives €240.98, which is €9.02 short.

Removing, at the reduced rate. A restaurant food total of €42.80 including 7% VAT:

vat = 42.80 x 7 / 107
    = 299.60 / 107
    = 2.80

netto = 42.80 - 2.80
      = 40.00

The cent case. €13.50 plus 19% is €2.57 of tax and €16.07 in total — not the €2.56 a floating-point calculation reports.

These are the same figures asserted in this tool’s test file, so the page and the formula cannot drift apart without the build going red.

What it does not do

It does not decide which band a supply falls in; that is the annex to the Act, and it is a list rather than a principle. It holds no historic rates, so an invoice from 2020’s temporary 16% window needs the rate typing into “Another rate”, which starts there for that reason. It does not handle the reverse charge, the small-business exemption under section 19, One Stop Shop filings, margin schemes or import VAT, and it does not tell you whether German rules apply to your sale at all.

For a country with no tool of its own, or a rate nothing here holds, a VAT calculator with no rate table is the right page. The two other countries covered so far are UK VAT and Irish VAT.

Adding VAT to a netto price:
  vat    = round(netto x rate / 100)
  brutto = netto + vat

Removing VAT from a brutto price:
  vat   = round(brutto x rate / (100 + rate))
  netto = brutto - vat

German bands and their VAT fractions:
  standard   19%   19/119   does not reduce
  reduced     7%    7/107   does not reduce
  solar       0%    no tax

round = to the nearest cent, half up. There is no
        round-down option, because German invoicing
        grants no equivalent of the British concession.

Only the VAT is rounded. The third figure is derived from
the other two, so netto + vat = brutto to the cent, always.