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Verification status of the territory table

data/rates.json is synced from TEDB and needs no human verification — if it is wrong, the Commission is wrong. data/territories.json is different: it encodes law and national postal geography, neither of which can be synced, and it is only as good as the last person who checked it.

This file records what has actually been verified, so the table's weakest data is visible rather than implied.

Verified against primary law

Which territories fall outside the EU VAT area, and the article establishing each. Checked against the consolidated text of Council Directive 2006/112/EC — Article 6(1) (inside the customs territory, outside VAT), Article 6(2) (outside both), and Article 7 (Monaco, the Isle of Man, Akrotiri and Dhekelia treated as FR / GB / CY). Overseas countries and territories are outside the EU altogether under TFEU Art. 355(2) and Annex II.

This matters more than it sounds. The Commission's own "Territorial status of EU countries and certain territories" summary page, read programmatically, reports the Canary Islands, Mount Athos, the Åland Islands and the French overseas departments as being inside the VAT area. Article 6 says the opposite. The table follows the Directive.

Verified postal rules

Every entry with postal_coverage: "complete" carries a postal_source naming the national authority it came from and a verified_on date. Checked 2026-09-15:

Territory Rule Source
Büsingen 78266 Deutsche Post; UStG §1(2)
Heligoland 27498 Deutsche Post
Canary Islands 35, 38 Correos — province prefixes (Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife)
Ceuta / Melilla 51 / 52 Correos — the two autonomous cities' province codes
French overseas departments 971–976 La Poste — three-digit overseas prefixes
Saint-Martin / Saint-Barthélemy 97150 / 97133 exact La Poste — kept their 971xx codes after the 2007 split
French OCTs 975, 984, 986, 987, 988 La Poste
Corsica 20 La Poste — both departments kept the pre-1976 number
Åland 22, and the AX- prefixed spelling Posti / UPU addressing guide
Mount Athos 63086 ELTA — Karyes, the postal address of every monastery
Campione d'Italia 22061 Poste Italiane
Livigno 23041, and legacy 23030 Poste Italiane
Jungholz / Mittelberg 6691, 6991–6993 Österreichische Post
Madeira / Azores 90–93 / 95–99 CTT
Monaco 98000 single code for the principality
Isle of Man / Northern Ireland IM / BT Royal Mail postcode areas

Rates for territories that differ from their member state were cross-checked against two independent sources: Madeira 22%, Azores 16% (PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries and Portuguese VAT guides agree on the standard rate). Jungholz and Mittelberg at 19% are corroborated by TEDB itself, which reports an Austrian 19% row marked category = REGION.

Known gaps, declared rather than hidden

Three entries carry postal_coverage: "none" — they exist in the table, but no postcode will match them:

  • The Aegean reduced-rate islands (EL). Greek law cuts VAT by 30% on qualifying Aegean islands (24% → 17%), extended from 2026-01-01 to the North Aegean, Samothrace and the Dodecanese for populations up to 20,000. Qualification is by island and population, not by postcode, and roughly 24 islands qualify across non-contiguous Greek postcode ranges. Mapping them would need per-island verification nobody has done, and a wrong mapping charges 17% where 24% is due. Greek addresses therefore resolve at the mainland 24%: right for the large majority, wrong for these islands. To close it, verify the postcodes per island, add a rate_override of 17.00, and clear rate_unverified.

  • The Italian waters of Lake Lugano. A body of water. Not addressable.

  • Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Sovereign Base Areas use Cypriot addressing, so no postcode could distinguish them — and they are treated as Cyprus anyway, so the answer is the same.

Two further limitations worth knowing:

  • Jungholz and Mittelberg also carry German postcodes (D-87491, D-87567/87568/87569) because German post serves them. An order addressed with country DE resolves as German — the same 19%, but attributed to the wrong country for OSS. Only the Austrian spellings are matched; claiming a German postcode is Austrian would be worse.

  • Only standard-rate overrides are modelled. Madeira's 12% intermediate and 4% super-reduced, the Azores' 9% and 4%, and Corsica's 0.9/2.1/10/13 schedule are documented in each entry's notes but are not returned by the lookup.

What keeps this honest

bin/regenerate-rates cross-checks every regional rate TEDB reports against this table and fails when TEDB names a region the table does not contain. That is not theoretical: it is how Corsica, the Aegean islands and the Azores/Madeira regional rates were discovered missing in the first place. Automation cannot curate law, but it can notice when the world moves.