Do I have to pay VAT immediately on a voucher I have sold?

That depends on the classification. If the place of supply and the tax rate are already fixed at issue, **Section 3(14)** (UStG) makes it a single-purpose voucher, and a transfer in your own name counts as the supply itself, so the tax arises with the sale. If at least one of those details is open, **Section 3(15)** (UStG) gives you a multi-purpose voucher, where only the actual supply is subject to VAT. Classifying the individual case belongs in the hands of a tax adviser, because it depends on the specific range of goods and services.

Do I need a full online shop for this?

Usually not. For voucher sales alone, a page with a choice of amounts, a payment and an automatic confirmation is enough. A full shop pays off as soon as further articles are added or several orders a week come in regularly. Both routes can be covered with our [online shop package](/en/online-shop-package/), and moving from one to the other later is usually possible without a rebuild.

What happens to a remaining balance after a partial redemption?

The remaining balance stays a claim and can be used later. For that to work without discussion it belongs, with a date, in the same list as the original code and should be confirmed to the guest in writing. Paying it out in cash is not automatic but a voluntary promise that should be settled in your own terms beforehand. In practice a missing note about the remaining balance is the most common point of dispute around vouchers.

Sell Gift Vouchers Online: Extra Revenue Before Christmas

Q: How long does a voucher have to stay valid?

Unless agreed otherwise, the standard limitation period of three years under **Section 195** (BGB) applies, which under **Section 199(1)** (BGB) starts at the end of the year in which the claim arose and the creditor learned of the circumstances giving rise to it. A voucher bought in December 2026 therefore runs as a rule until the end of 31 December 2029. Shorter periods are a question of contract drafting and should be checked legally beforehand.

Q: Is selling vouchers worth it for a very small business?

The starting figures suggest so: in the consumer survey on the 2025 Christmas trade gift vouchers were named as a planned Christmas present more often than any other category at **29 percent** (HDE), and **71 percent** (HDE) of respondents said they start buying the bulk of their presents only in November and December. Because no stock is needed, the risk stays low. In practice a single well-made page pays for itself once more than a handful of vouchers are sold in a year.

Q: Does the small business scheme change anything about the voucher?

On the receipt yes, in substance little. Without VAT shown, the difference between a single-purpose and a multi-purpose voucher makes no difference to the printout. For the thresholds it stays relevant: under **Section 19(1)** (UStG) the turnover is exempt if total turnover did not exceed **25,000 euros** (UStG) in the previous calendar year and does not exceed **100,000 euros** (UStG) in the current calendar year. Because the money from a voucher flows earlier than the work, it is worth looking at the total as early as November.

In short and in plain language

Many people like to give vouchers as a Christmas gift. A voucher brings in money before you do the work.

For tax, one question matters most. Is it clear at the sale what the voucher is for? That decides when VAT is due.

On your own website you need little at first. You need an order form, a confirmation with a code and a list to tick off.

A voucher does not last forever. But a remaining balance is still owed. Note it with the date.

We set up voucher sales on your website.

Every November the same question comes up in small businesses: how do you take part in the Christmas trade without buying stock that is still on the shelf in January? The answer has come out on top of the same survey two years running. In the consumer survey on the 2025 Christmas trade, gift vouchers were, at 29 percent (HDE), the category most respondents planned to buy a Christmas present from, ahead of toys, books and cosmetics; a year earlier they led as well, at 30 percent (HDE). For retail in the narrower sense, that is excluding motor vehicles, fuel stations, heating fuels and pharmacies, the German retail federation forecast revenue of 126.2 billion euros excluding VAT (HDE) for November and December 2025, and in 2024 those same two months accounted for 18.5 percent (HDE) of annual revenue on the same basis. A voucher is one of the few offers you can sell without owning it first: the money arrives today, you deliver later. That is exactly where the three sticking points come from in practice, namely VAT, validity and redemption at the counter. This article shows which question decides when the tax falls due, what selling on your own website needs technically, and how you still know in February which code has already been redeemed.

Key takeaways

In the consumer survey on the 2025 Christmas trade gift vouchers led at 29 percent (HDE): no other category was named more often as a planned Christmas present.
The tax question is decided at one point. If the place of supply and the tax rate are already fixed at issue, it is a single-purpose voucher under Section 3(14) (UStG) and the tax arises with the sale.
With a multi-purpose voucher under Section 3(15) (UStG) the issue itself carries no VAT; only the actual supply is taxed at the moment of redemption.
Unless agreed otherwise, a claim from a voucher becomes time-barred after three years counted from the end of the year of issue, under Section 195 (BGB) and Section 199(1) (BGB).
The sale belongs on your own page: an order route, a confirmation with a code and a list in which redemptions are ticked off are entirely enough to start with.

Why the voucher works so well before Christmas

The course of the Christmas trade is well measured. In the consumer survey on the 2025 Christmas trade, 71 percent (HDE) of respondents said they start buying the bulk of their presents only in November and December, and on average 263 euros (HDE) were planned for gift purchases. The mood was cautious: 21 percent (HDE) intended to spend less than the year before, ten percent (HDE) more, and 83 percent (HDE) of the retail companies surveyed expected customers to pay closer attention to price. For a small business that is not bad news but a description of the situation. Anyone buying late and watching the price will typically reach for something where the amount stays freely selectable and the question of taste stays open. That is precisely what a voucher is. It resolves two uncertainties at once, the one about the right object and the one about the budget, and it fits into almost any schedule.

Late moment, immediate revenue

A voucher can still be delivered at ten in the evening on 23 December. A confirmation with a code in the inbox costs no shipping time, and the work itself moves into a quarter with more room in the calendar.

No stock, no leftovers

Unlike goods, vouchers tie up no capital and create no January inventory that has to be marked down. What is not sold costs nothing, because it was not bought in at all.

A second appointment appears

Every redeemed voucher brings someone into the business who would otherwise not have come. Often that is a person who does not know the business yet, because the voucher was given as a present rather than bought for oneself.

This last point is regularly underestimated. A voucher is typically bought by one person and redeemed by another. That means you are not paying for advertising to get someone new through the door; the contact arrives together with the revenue. For that effect to happen, though, the redemption has to be pleasant. A voucher that triggers a discussion at the till because nobody knows whether it is still valid costs more trust than the revenue was worth. What a page looks like that takes appointments and enquiries without friction is shown in the article on online appointment booking.

Single or multi-purpose: the one question that decides the tax point

Before tax rates come up, it has to be settled whether there is a voucher within the meaning of the law at all. Section 3(13) (UStG) requires two things: an obligation to accept the instrument as full or partial consideration for a supply of goods or services, and the indication of the goods, the service or the identity of the supplier, either on the instrument itself or in the related documentation including the terms of use. Instruments that merely entitle the holder to a price reduction are expressly excluded. A ten percent discount code is therefore not a voucher in this sense, whereas a value voucher for 50 euros is. The distinction sounds academic, but it decides whether the rules that follow apply at all.

Is the service fixed? A voucher for a named treatment describes the service; a voucher for 50 euros to be used freely describes only an amount.
Is the place of supply fixed? For a business with one address that is rarely disputed. As soon as cross-border shipping or a digital service comes into play, the place can shift.
Is the tax rate fixed? As soon as the range covers more than one rate, it is open at the moment of issue. In practice that is the most common reason a voucher becomes a multi-purpose voucher.

If all three points are settled at issue, Section 3(14) (UStG) applies. Under it, a voucher for which the place of the supply and the tax due on it are fixed at the time of issue is a single-purpose voucher; if a business transfers it in its own name, that transfer counts as the supply of the goods or the provision of the service. In plain terms: the revenue arose with the sale, and the later redemption is not a second event for VAT purposes. If one of the details is missing, Section 3(15) (UStG) gives you a multi-purpose voucher. Then only the actual supply of goods or services is subject to VAT, whereas every preceding transfer of that voucher is not subject to VAT. For the return that means: with a single-purpose voucher the tax sits in December, with a multi-purpose voucher in the month of redemption.

Feature	Single-purpose voucher	Multi-purpose voucher
Place of supply and tax rate at issue	both are fixed	at least one is open
Rule in the German VAT Act	Section 3(14) (UStG)	Section 3(15) (UStG)
VAT arises	on issue	on redemption
Receipt at issue	with the tax rate shown	without VAT shown
Typical case in a small business	voucher for a named service	value voucher for an amount
Redemption in the books	no new revenue	revenue in the month of redemption

Why a restaurant voucher is usually a multi-purpose voucher

Under Section 12(2) no. 15 (UStG) the reduced rate applies to restaurant and catering services, with the exception of the supply of drinks. A value voucher for 50 euros that is later redeemed for food and wine together therefore meets two tax rates, and which share falls on which is not fixed at issue. Precisely that openness makes it a multi-purpose voucher. Anyone issuing a voucher for a named menu without drinks instead may end up with a single-purpose voucher. Both routes are permissible; they differ only in when the tax falls due. Classifying the individual case belongs in the hands of a tax adviser; the website merely has to be able to represent both variants. The wider frame for hospitality businesses is in the article on the restaurant website.

What the voucher needs on the website

Technically a voucher is a very simple product. There is no shipping, there are no sizes, no variants and no return in the classic sense. What it needs is a route without detours: a page where amount and occasion are chosen, a payment, an immediate confirmation and a file that can be printed. Anyone already thinking about a shop will find the groundwork in the article on the small online shop for small businesses; for voucher sales alone, the scope of our online shop package is usually enough. What matters is not the size of the system but that no night falls between the intention to buy and the confirmation.

A choice of amounts or a fixed service: three to five preset amounts plus a free field cover almost every wish without overloading the page.
A personal message and a preferred date: two short fields that turn a payment into a present and save you asking about the occasion.
An immediate confirmation with a unique code: the mail has to arrive within seconds, otherwise someone asks the same evening or orders a second time.
A printable template: a plain A5 page with amount, code, validity and business details is enough and prints at home on an ordinary printer.
A note on redemption and validity: where, how and until when the voucher can be used belongs on the voucher itself, not only in the confirmation mail.
A list of open codes: without it, in February you can no longer tell which voucher has been used and which is still outstanding.

Work through the Christmas window once

Suppose you sell 40 vouchers at an average of 60 euros between 1 and 24 December. That is 2,400 euros sitting in the account in December although the work behind it has not been done. If these are multi-purpose vouchers, no VAT is payable on that amount at first, because under Section 3(15) (UStG) only the actual supply is taxed. If 25 vouchers are redeemed in January and February, the revenue spreads across two months that are otherwise quiet. The remaining 15 typically resurface spread over the year. The only thing that matters is that you know the open amounts: without a list, neither the liability nor the revenue can be assigned cleanly at the end of the year.

For the visibility of that page the same rule applies as for any other subpage: it has to exist before anyone searches. A voucher page created on 15 December has a hard time, because search needs time to take up a new address. How long that takes and how you read the progress is in the article on how long until Google finds your website. For the paid route, a dedicated target page usually works better than the home page, because amount and occasion can be picked up directly there; how such a landing page is built we have described separately.

The sales route: from the click to the confirmation

There are three usual ways to sell a voucher through your own website, and they differ less in the result than in the effort. Which one fits depends on how many vouchers you expect and whether someone in the business is around to process orders in the evening. All three can be extended later; none of them is a one-way street.

A page in the online shop

The voucher is an article like any other; payment and confirmation run automatically. This pays off from around two orders a week and carries outside the Christmas season as well.

A dedicated voucher page

A single page with a choice of amounts and a payment, without a shop structure behind it. It is quick to build, easy to promote and stays linkable all year round.

A form with an invoice

The order arrives by form, you write the invoice and send the voucher by hand. That costs time per order but needs neither a payment connection nor a shop.

The third route is the entry point, but it has a hard limit: at nine in the evening on 23 December nobody wants to wait for an invoice. Anyone offering the voucher as a last-minute present needs a payment that completes immediately and a confirmation that goes out without your involvement. On the question of whether the amount should be on the page there is a clear answer: with a voucher the amount is the product. Why prices on a website usually help more than they hurt is set out in the article should you show prices on your website.

The small business scheme: what changes for the voucher

Anyone using the German small business scheme shows no VAT. The classification as a single-purpose or multi-purpose voucher therefore loses its effect on the receipt, but not its relevance for the revenue threshold. Under Section 19(1) (UStG) the turnover is exempt if total turnover did not exceed 25,000 euros (UStG) in the previous calendar year and does not exceed 100,000 euros (UStG) in the current calendar year. A strong voucher year can bring one of those limits closer than the order book suggests, because the money flows earlier than the work. So check the figures in November rather than with the annual return; which website costs can be set against them is covered in the article writing off website costs.

Redemption in the business: the moment it goes wrong

The sale is the easy part. It gets difficult weeks later, when someone stands at the counter with a printed sheet and nobody can say whether that code has been in before. In small businesses this often ends in a drawer full of copies. That is not a detail: a voucher redeemed twice is a real loss, and a voucher wrongly refused is a lost guest. Both can be avoided with four steps that together typically take less than ten minutes to set up.

Every voucher gets a unique code that is not sequential. A mix of letters and digits makes the next code much harder to guess.
The code appears on the printout and in the confirmation mail. That keeps it findable even if the sheet is lost.
On redemption the code is looked up in a list and ticked off with a date. A spreadsheet is enough as long as everyone in the business uses the same one.
On partial redemption the remaining amount is noted in the same row and confirmed to the guest in writing. Without that note the dispute that comes up most often in practice arises.

Anyone wanting to shorten the route further keeps the list where the work happens anyway, in the calendar or in the till system. What matters is the rule, not the tool: a voucher counts as redeemed once somebody has ticked it off, not once somebody remembers. Businesses with many short appointments, such as hairdressers and beauty studios, sensibly tie the redemption directly to the booking; the frame for that is in the article on the website for hairdressers and beauty studios.

A voucher is sold once the money is there and settled once somebody ticks it off. All the trouble sits between those two moments.

Webstart on selling vouchers through your own website

Validity, limitation and the remaining balances

The expiry date on the voucher is the point where people guess most often. The legal frame is short: Section 195 (BGB) sets the standard limitation period at three years, and under Section 199(1) (BGB) it begins at the end of the year in which the claim arose and the creditor learned of the circumstances giving rise to the claim and of the identity of the debtor, or would have learned of them but for gross negligence. A voucher sold in December 2026 therefore becomes time-barred as a rule at the end of 31 December 2029. Shorter periods in your own terms are a question of contract drafting in the individual case. Anyone wanting to set them should have them checked legally rather than copying a figure from someone else's voucher.

In practice the treatment of remaining balances matters more than the deadline. If a voucher for 60 euros is redeemed against a service costing 45 euros, 15 euros remain open. Those 15 euros are still a claim, and the guest will typically expect to use them later. Describing that clearly on the voucher and in your own terms saves the discussion at the counter. Paying out a remaining balance in cash, by contrast, is not automatic; it can be offered but has to be settled in advance. And one small thing with a large effect: note the date of issue on the voucher. Without that date, neither the period nor the allocation to the right financial year can be traced later.

Four details that belong on every voucher

First the amount or the named service, because the classification under Section 3(14) (UStG) and Section 3(15) (UStG) hangs on it. Second the unique code, because it is what makes redemption traceable in the first place. Third the date of issue, because it marks the start of the period under Section 199(1) (BGB). Fourth the name and address of the business, because a voucher without an identifiable issuer is worth little in case of doubt. Everything else, from the design to the personal dedication, is optional. These four details fit on half a sheet and prevent most queries before they arise.

After Christmas: what is left

The Christmas trade ends on 24 December; the voucher business does not. The online share of those two months was forecast by the retail federation for 2025 at 22.2 billion euros (HDE), and part of that is a promise of a service that will only be delivered in the new year. For a small business that means January brings not just the follow-up work but also a row of appointments that are already paid for. That is a good starting position when it is planned and a burden when it comes as a surprise. Seasonal businesses know the pattern from other contexts; how such a yearly rhythm can be reflected on a website is shown in the article on the car repair shop website in the tyre season.

On 2 January count the open codes and the total open amount. That single figure is the basis for everything else and usually takes less than fifteen minutes.
Decide how many voucher appointments per week fit into the calendar, so that January does not choke on December's revenue.
Keep the voucher page online all year. Birthdays, weddings and anniversaries spread across twelve months; the page only has to stay reachable.
In November check which amounts were actually bought the year before and adjust the preset steps accordingly.

So that this does not start from scratch next December, the voucher page belongs in the ongoing care: amounts, the validity note and the confirmation text are reviewed once a year, just like the rest of the content. What that involves is described under website maintenance; which building blocks are included in which scope is set out on the packages page. And anyone wanting to make more of voucher sales will find an example of how regional businesses sell without anything in between in the article on the farm shop website.

This article is based on data from: Handelsverband Deutschland, Das Weihnachtsgeschäft im Einzelhandel 2025 (Berlin, 5 November 2025) and Weihnachts-Pressekonferenz des Handelsverbandes Deutschland (Berlin, 6 November 2024), the German VAT Act as published on gesetze-im-internet.de and the German Civil Code as published on gesetze-im-internet.de. The figures were last checked against these sources on 6 September 2026.

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