CESOP threshold checker
More than 25 cross-border payments to one payee in a quarter, and every payment to that payee becomes reportable — not just the ones after the twenty-fifth. This works out whether a payee is in scope, how many payments you report, and whether you are the PSP that has to file at all.
Art. 243b VAT Directive · per payee, not per payer · payer and payee PSP roles · nothing stored
Check one payee, one quarter
Runs in your browser · nothing uploadedAssess a single payee for a single calendar quarter, in a single Member State where you provide payment services. The count aggregates every payer — the threshold is per payee, not per payer-payee pair.
Your role in the payment
Determines whether you report or only countThe quarter
Article 243b(2) · calendar quarter, per Member StateThe threshold is the easy part. The XML is not. The CESOP module aggregates payees across accounts, applies the threshold per Member State, validates against the schema and produces the submission file — with a free tier to start.
Create free account →Where CESOP counting goes wrong
The threshold is one sentence long. Almost every implementation error comes from one of these three.
Per payee, not per payer
Thirty payments from thirty different payers in fifteen Member States to one payee is thirty payments towards that payee’s threshold. Counting by payer-payee pair produces thirty counts of one and reports nothing.
All of them, not the excess
Once a payee passes twenty-five, every cross-border payment to that payee in the quarter becomes reportable — including the first twenty-five. Reporting only payments twenty-six onwards understates by exactly twenty-five.
Counting is not reporting
A payer’s PSP is relieved where the payee’s PSP sits in a Member State, but must still count those payments towards the threshold when deciding whether the third-country leg is reportable.
Rules reviewed 21 August 2026 · Council Directive (EU) 2020/284, Art. 243a–243d VAT Directive · Council Regulation (EU) 2020/283 · Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1504
Four quarters, four deadlines
Records are kept per calendar quarter and transmitted by the end of the month following the quarter to which they relate.
Submission is to the tax authority of each Member State in which you provide payment services, which forwards the data to CESOP. Confirm the exact date and channel with each authority — the transmission mechanics are set nationally.
What this checker does
It applies the Article 243b threshold and the reporting-role rules to one payee. It does not identify your payees or classify your payments.
It doesApply the threshold and the roles
- Tests the more-than-25 threshold correctly, so exactly 25 is not in scope.
- Makes clear that every payment to a payee over the threshold is reportable, not only the excess.
- Distinguishes the payee’s PSP as primary reporter from the payer’s PSP.
- Handles the payer’s PSP case where some payments go to a third-country account.
- Excludes payments from payers outside the EU from the reportable population.
- Sets out the quarterly deadlines.
It does notIdentify payees or payments
- Aggregate a payee across multiple accounts or identifiers, which is where most of the work sits.
- Decide whether a payment is cross-border, or where a payer or payee is located under Article 243c.
- Apply the specific treatment of marketplaces, e-money, gift vouchers or acquiring chains.
- Determine which Member States you are treated as providing payment services in.
- Generate, validate or transmit the CESOP XML.
- Constitute tax advice.
Past the threshold and need the file?
Reportable payments are transmitted as CESOP XML to each Member State’s tax authority, validated against the schema in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1504.
Nothing you type here leaves your browser
The check runs entirely in your own browser. No figure you enter is sent to REGREP, written to a log, saved to a database, or passed to any analytics tool.
Reload the page and everything is gone. Payee identification, threshold monitoring and file generation happen inside your account, under our data processing agreement.
About CESOP reporting
Is the threshold 25 or more than 25?
More than 25. Article 243b(2) requires the payment service provider to execute more than 25 cross-border payments to a given payee in a calendar quarter before any information is transmitted. A payee receiving exactly 25 is not reportable; a payee receiving 26 is, and all 26 payments are reported.
Is the count per payer or per payee?
Per payee, aggregated across every payer. A payee receiving 30 cross-border payments from 30 different payers across 15 Member States has met the threshold, and all 30 payments are reportable. Counting by payer-payee pair is the single most common implementation error, because it produces 30 counts of one and reports nothing.
Do I report only the payments above 25?
No. Once the payee crosses the threshold, every cross-border payment to that payee in that quarter becomes reportable, including the first 25. Reporting only from the 26th onwards understates the submission by exactly 25 payments per payee.
Both banks are involved. Do we both report?
Generally no. Where the payee’s PSP is located in a Member State, that PSP reports and the payer’s PSP is relieved for those payments. The payer’s PSP does report payments made to a payment account in a third country, and must include the Member State payments in its threshold calculation even though it does not report them.
What about payments from outside the EU?
Payments from a payer located outside the EU are not reported to CESOP. The regime is aimed at payments where the payer is in a Member State and the payee is elsewhere, so a payer outside the Union falls outside the reportable population.
Whose identity is reported?
The payee’s. CESOP collects data about the recipient of funds, not the payer, because the purpose is identifying sellers who under-declare rather than monitoring consumers.
Do you store what I enter?
No. Everything is calculated in your browser and discarded when you close or reload the page.
Counting is quarterly. Getting it wrong is cumulative.
Create a free account and let the threshold, the payee aggregation and the XML be handled together, every quarter.
No card required · free tier on core modules · nothing stored from this checker