The future of Intrastat
Page updated on November 22, 2024
In order to reduce the burden on PSIs, the EU Commission’s EEA committee and Committee for Foreign Trade Statistics approved the initiation of planning a SIMSTAT project (Single Market Statistics) in 2012. Its proposition was that all member states collect EU internal export data but that the internal import data is constructed based on the export data collected by the other countries. The EBS entered into force in 1.1.2021 and the mandatory Intrastat micro data exchange entered into force one year after the basic regulation, that was as of 1.1.2022. The EBS basic regulation (EU 2019/2152) has been published in Official Journal at 17 December 2019.
Customs statistics examined different statistical methods with the aim of maintaining the current quality of the statistics while reducing the response burden on companies. Finnish Customs' objective in 2019-2024 was that the modernisation of Intrastat would have largely eliminated the need for Intrastat declarations of EU internal imports per company, as export microdata collected by other member states would replace it. However, companies cannot be exempted from Intrastat import declaration obligations in Finland, because microdata received from other member states does not qualitatively replace Intrastat declarations. In the future, the thresholds for Intrastat declarations in Finland will also be defined annually in such a way that the smallest Finnish companies are exempted from the Intrastat declaration obligation.
In the EU project for customs statistics, a new statistical method was developed in 2022-2023, but for only ten percent of companies, microdata received from other member states would have almost directly replaced Intrastat import data on a company-by-company basis. In 2024, another statistical method was developed in customs statistics, which adapted the method used by Denmark. From December 2023 ,the necessary VIES data for this purpose was received from the Finnish Tax Administration faster than before, because VAT seasonal tax data (the Danish method) was not available fast enough in Finland. VIES data is updated by up to tens of percent after the publication of preliminary statistics and the updating varies from month to month. In November 2024, as a result of the second statistical method, the EU import statistics would be too incomplete in the preliminary statistics and the quality changes to the published statistical data were not acceptable (for example, the distribution of commodity code, the distribution of mode of transport). Customs discussed the issue together with Statistics Finland. Next, a third different statistical method will be further investigated, in which the microdata received from other member states would be used in the distribution of EU imports below the value threshold. This would allow for a higher Intrastat import threshold, which would exempt the smallest companies from reporting Intrastat imports.
More information about the future of Intrastat:
Statistics Director Olli-Pekka Penttilä, olli-pekka.penttila@tulli.fi