Creating of a single market space within the European Union resulted in revocation of goods movement control at the EU Member States borders. The border check cancellation brought some positive elements such as goods exchange facilitation, elimination of large quantitiy of documents and ultimately exchanged goods price reduction. However, to prevent possible fraud in connection with the absence of border checks, the EU established a VIES system (VAT Information Exchange System).

Design and implementation of such system was one of the strategic EU entry conditions the Slovak Republic had to fulfill. We have implemented this information exchange system before the accession and since then we are keeping it up to date according to EU requirements.

The VIES provides two main services:

• for companies it enables to quickly obtain confirmation of current or potential business partners VAT registration validity
  

• for the tax administration employees it allows to monitor and check the flow of intra-communitary transactions in order to detect any potential frauds.