Are you vat registered in your own country ? your vat liabilty is with your own vat authorities not with the ones overseas. Legislation may have changed in jan 15' but its been this way for years, vat gets charged at the final place of sale. If you are not vat registered and you are not invoicing out vat then I dont see how it affects you.
This is wrong. As of January 2015, the amount of VAT charged is dependent on the location/residence of the customer. For example, if you run a business and your company is VAT registered in Germany (19% VAT) and someone from France (20% VAT) buys your product/service, then you need to apply 20% VAT to the transaction. Furthermore, as per the new EU VAT regulations, quarterly VAT filings should be made to a central EU organization called MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop), from which your collected VAT gets distributed to the countries where your customers were from. If you do not do this, you will technically need to register yourself with the local tax authorities in every EU country where your customers were from and manually submit your VAT filings to each of the relevant local tax authorities.
Choosing not to register yourself for VAT is also not an option if you are actively selling products/services within the EU. You have to be registered with your local chamber of commerce if you are actively selling products/services and you have to be registered for VAT.
VAT is pretty much optional on digital products and services in the EU, if the company is based overseas.
Setup a company not in the EU, so you can get around the VAT.
This is also incorrect. As per the new EU VAT regulations, EU now expects non-EU businesses to also charge VAT (and collect the necessary information) when conducting business with EU citizens. How will this be enforced? Who knows. But the fact is this is something they are actively working on implementing.
Bump. Wondering if anybody here actually complies with this stupid law?
Btw, in 2017 a threshold is planned to be introduced below which businesses will be exempt of this law.
It is a pain in the ass, but you should definitely do the necessary research and become compliant with the new regulations. Feigning ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse and will not exempt you from potential penalties if the tax authorities deem you to be in violation of the regulations and decide to go after you.
Just to be clear, I am in no way in favor of the new regulations and I think the people in charge of making these decisions have a very poor grasp on the realities and complexities of running a business and complying with these regulations. But if you are serious about running a business, it should be your priority to become compliant with these regulations ASAP.
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