Veterinary VAT 2026: medicines, care and applicable rates

Quick answer. At a veterinary clinic, care and veterinary medicines fall under 20% VAT. Feed follows the animal: 5.5% for animals producing food, 20% for pets. The 2.10% rate applies only to reimbursable human medicines, never to veterinary products.

The practical challenge at a veterinary clinic is not knowing the rates but splitting them correctly, line by line, on invoices that combine a consultation, a resale of medicines and sometimes a bag of kibble. A single transaction at the counter actually covers two regimes: a service and a sale of goods. A wrong split exposes you to incorrect output VAT and poorly tracked inventory.

This article is an operating manual. For the overall picture of the profession (company status, accounting organisation, the practitioner's taxation), see our companion guide to veterinary clinic accounting. Here we deal with the mechanics: which rate, on which line, and which entry.

The starting point is a still-common misconception: that medicines benefit from a reduced rate. This is incorrect for veterinary medicines. France has not exercised the option opened by the European directive to apply a reduced rate to veterinary services, and veterinary products remain at the standard rate. The 2.10% rate set out in Article 281 octies of the French Tax Code is strictly reserved for human medicines reimbursable by social security.

The operational consequence is clear. For an urban clinic whose clientele consists of pets, everything is at 20%: the consultation, the resold medicines and the kibble. The 5.5% rate applies in practice only to rural or mixed structures that sell feed intended for livestock. If you see 5.5% on the till of a small-animal clinic, it is almost always a setting to correct.

The resale of medicines and feed is a commercial activity generating commercial income, distinct from care fees. This duality must show in the chart of accounts. Here is the reference scheme.

In practice, a consultation invoiced at 60 euros including tax means 50 euros credited to account 706 and 10 euros to account 4457. The sale of a medicine at 24 euros including tax goes to account 707 for 20 euros and to 4457 for 4 euros. On purchase, the wholesaler's invoice feeds account 607 and 4456, and the medicine enters inventory in account 37 until it is resold. This 706 / 707 split is not cosmetic: it drives the reading of the commercial margin and the consistency of inventory tracking.

The chargeability rule, often overlooked#

The two operations do not trigger VAT at the same moment. For care services, VAT is chargeable upon collection. For sales of goods (medicines, feed), it is chargeable upon delivery. A clinic frequently collects both in the same counter payment, which masks the distinction. If you track VAT on goods upon collection for convenience, you defer a tax that is already due. The risk mainly materialises on credit sales or accounts opened for breeders.

1. Identify each invoice line as a care service or a sale of goods.
2. Assign the rate: 20% for care and medicines, 20% or 5.5% for feed depending on the destination animal.
3. Post the income to the right account: 706 for care, 707 for resold goods.
4. Split output VAT by rate in account 4457, and input VAT on purchases in account 4456.
5. Enter purchases for resale into inventory (37) and record the change at year-end (6037).
6. Before filing, reconcile turnover by rate with the till and check consistency.

Splitting checklist#

• Does the point-of-sale software separate a "care" family from a "products" family?
• Does each resold product carry its own rate (20% by default, 5.5% reserved for livestock feed)?
• Are fees recorded in 706 and product sales in 707?
• Are medicines consumed during a procedure treated as a cost of the procedure rather than a resale?
• Is the merchandise inventory counted net of tax at year-end?
• Is VAT on goods reported upon delivery and not upon collection?

The issue is not knowing the rates, which fits in a few lines, but the discipline of configuration. In the clinic files we support, the most structural error comes from the point-of-sale software, not from the bookkeeping: a product miscategorised at setup propagates a wrong rate across thousands of lines before anyone notices. When we take on a veterinary file, our priority is therefore the audit of the article-family settings, well before the accounting entry itself.

The most costly trap is not the rate, it is the confusion between a consumed medicine and a resold one. A product used during surgery is a cost of the care service; the same product handed to the client for home treatment is a sale of goods. Recording a resale as mere consumption makes commercial turnover vanish, distorts the margin and can misalign inventory. Conversely, treating every product as a resale artificially inflates account 707. The line is drawn at the moment of delivery, not at purchase.

For veterinary VAT, attention focuses on consistency between the rate applied and the actual nature of the product. A 5.5% rate on feed must be justifiable by the animal's destination (food production). On a pet clientele, this reduced rate is abnormal and calls for justification. The authorities also check input VAT on merchandise purchases and the separation of care and resale activities. Keeping clean inventory tracking and a documented split by rate is the best answer.

A veterinary clinic recently entrusted us with its accounting after noticing a persistent gap between its till turnover and its VAT returns. On review, several references of dog kibble had been set at 5.5%, by a mistaken analogy with feed for food-producing animals. Correcting the settings and reclassifying at the standard rate restored consistency. This example is typical: the error rarely stems from bad faith, but from an initial setting that was never reviewed.

Our firm, registered with the Île-de-France Order of Chartered Accountants, supports animal health professionals in bookkeeping, review and taxation. The self-employed veterinarian operates under the BNC regime or through a company (SELARL) and belongs to the CARPV pension fund, which excludes them from the micro-entrepreneur regime. For the broader framework, see our accounting support for veterinarians or learn how to secure your taxation with our firm.

The logic of a multi-rate invoice goes beyond the veterinary case: our articles on applying several VAT rates on a single invoice and on VAT returns and deductions for an SME set out the common rules. As mandatory electronic invoicing approaches, a clean split by rate becomes a technical issue: an invoice miscoded at source will propagate into the structured format. This is the right time to make your article families reliable.