Two words, and they are not the same
Verified means every value in the file has been compared with its primary source one by one, and every disagreement chased down to the national authority that sets it. The table of VAT rates in the twenty-seven member states is verified in this sense.
Indicative means the figure is real but there is no single official list to check it against. That is a property of the subject, not an unfinished job. A carrier’s volumetric divisor is a term of your contract, and the same carrier uses different ones for different tariffs. Amazon’s referral fees sit behind a login in Seller Central and have no public source at all. Customs duty lives on a ten-digit code, while a table of product groups has two to four digits — hundreds of codes with different rates behind one line.
Where a figure is indicative, the page says so above the result and lets you type your own number in. That is the honest handling: better an empty field the reader fills than a plausible default they trust.
How a figure is checked
The primary source comes first, and where it publishes a list, that is the end of it. The interesting case is when it does not. The European Commission no longer publishes a static table of VAT rates: they live in the TEDB database and are answered one country at a time.
So the check rests on a named document plus an independent second reading, with every disagreement between them resolved down to the national tax authority. For the VAT table that was table 3 of the European Parliament briefing PE 782.613, “Highs and lows: VAT rate-setting in the European Union” (January 2026), drawn from the same TEDB, cross-read against an independent January 2026 snapshot.
The date on the page is the date of that comparison, not the date the page was edited.
What the checking actually found
Three real errors, all of them ours, all fixed at the source file so the correction reached every language and every calculator at once.
Estonia was missing a rate. The 13 % reduced rate on accommodation, in force since 1 January 2025, was not in the file. The VAT calculator simply did not offer it in the list.
Slovenia was labelled wrongly. Its 5 % sat in the “super-reduced” field. The directive calls super-reduced a rate below 5 %; exactly 5 % is a second reduced rate. The site had been printing the wrong label under the right number.
Footwear duty was understated on the commonest case. One line read “6403, 6404 — 8 %”. That is right for 6403, where the upper is leather, and wrong for 6404, where it is textile and the rate is about 17 %. Heading 6404 covers nearly every sneaker imported from Asia, so the calculator was understating duty precisely where it is used most. The line is now two lines.
Also checked and deliberately left alone: Malta’s 12 %, which several summaries omit; Cyprus at 3 %; and Romania’s single 11 % reduced rate that replaced 5 % and 9 %.
What “verified” does not cover
The set of rates in each country is checked. Which goods get which rate is not, and cannot be: that is decided by a national list of categories, it runs to hundreds of entries per country, and it does not live in a reference file of this kind. A rate that exists in Spain does not mean your product gets it in Spain.
Changes during 2026 that moved goods between existing rates were tracked separately and needed no edit to the file: the Netherlands moved accommodation from 9 % to 21 %, Belgium from 6 % to 12 % on 1 March 2026, Germany fixed 7 % in catering, Austria zero-rated hygiene products. The rates themselves did not move — the goods did.
When it is re-checked, and how to report an error
Each reference file carries its own review date, and it is shown wherever the file is used, so a stale figure is visible rather than implied. Re-checking is triggered by two things: the calendar, and a change announced by a member state.
If you find a number that disagrees with its official source, please write. Corrections are made in the reference file, which means they appear on every language version and in every calculator that reads it, in one edit. Accuracy in this subject is worth more than volume of content, and a reported error is the cheapest way to get it.
Why some pages cite no source
A page cites an official source when one exists. VAT rates have the Commission behind them; pallet and container dimensions have EPAL and ISO 668; road weight limits have the Commission again; a currency conversion has the European Central Bank’s reference rates. Those pages link to them.
Arithmetic has no authority to cite. There is no institution that publishes what a percentage is, how a markup differs from a margin, or where the break-even point of a fixed cost sits. On those pages the honest equivalent of a source is the formula itself, printed above the result so you can check the calculation rather than trust it. A citation invented for such a page would look like rigour and be the opposite.