Hungary
The Union's lowest profit tax and its highest VAT — and every invoice is reported to the tax office in real time
Hungary is the cheapest place in the Union to tax profit — 9 % — which is why a good many Central European firms put production or a trading company there. Two things offset it: VAT is 27 %, the highest in the Union, and on top of profit tax comes a local business tax of up to 2 % of adjusted revenue, set by the municipality. The administration is digital and strict: every invoice issued by a Hungarian VAT payer is transmitted to the tax office in real time through the Online Számla system. Anyone selling there, or holding a company there, needs invoicing software that can do it.
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Recent trade news from this country's authorities and newsrooms — tariffs, taxes, sanctions, currency, imports and exports. Headlines are in the original language; the article opens at the publisher. We add no comment.
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Setting up a company
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Legal forms
- ·Minimum capital
- ·How long registration takes
Taxes
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Corporate income tax
- ·VAT
Visas and residence
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Short stay
- ·Work permit
- ·Residence
What it makes and needs
Automotive and batteries, electronics, pharmaceuticals, agriculture and food processing, logistics. Hungary has built much of its industrial policy around battery manufacturing and the supply chain around it — for Central European engineering and chemical firms that is the most concrete opportunity in this market.
Money and payments
The forint (HUF), freely convertible, floating and notably volatile in recent years. That is precisely why most contracts with Hungarian partners are concluded in euro; contracts in forint use an exchange-rate clause.
Possible change — we are checking it against this report: Fontos jeleket kapnak a befektetők, mozdulhat a forint árfolyama is (Portfolio.hu, 2026-10-29)
Importing into their market
The Union's single market — no duty is paid and no customs declaration is filed. Goods move freely; no proof of origin and no preference is needed. What replaces the customs work is tax work: a supply to a VAT-registered customer in Maďarska is an intra-Community supply, exempt with the right to deduct, and the customer accounts for the tax. It depends on a valid VAT number checked in VIES and on proof of transport — without both, the exemption falls away and you pay the tax.
ONLINE SZÁMLA — real-time invoice reporting. Every invoice issued by a Hungarian VAT payer must be transmitted to the tax authority (NAV) electronically without delay. It does not affect a Slovak company invoicing from Slovakia, but it applies the moment you set up a company there or register for Hungarian VAT — from then on your invoicing system has to talk to NAV. It is not optional and it cannot be done by hand at any volume.
If people travel with the goods — installation, servicing, training — that is posting of workers under Directives 96/71/EC and 2018/957. It requires notification before work starts, the host country's minimum wage and allowances, documentation in the host country's language, and an A1 certificate for each posted worker. Inspections are frequent in all three of these states and the fines are high.
Outlook
What to watch: the forint, the most volatile currency in the region, which changes the arithmetic of every contract in local money; whether the battery-manufacturing investments materialise, being the largest bet of Hungarian industrial policy; and the relationship with the Union over access to funds, on which infrastructure financing depends.
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A visa, legalising a document, an invitation letter, the commercial attaché before a trade fair — these only go through a mission. Below are the official registers rather than transcribed addresses: missions move and consular hours change several times a year, so a link to the register stays current where a transcript would not.
Where a country has no mission in Bratislava or Prague it is usually accredited from Vienna, Berlin or Warsaw — the register says which.
Every figure names the authority that published it and the date the line was last worked on. This is not legal or tax advice — verify a figure with the named source before you act on it.