[dvfjsdhgfv]

Well, it's not that - before that law was introduced, you could simply ignore the country, since it's about digital downloads. If all you cared for was getting a payment, it was not unusual to have the transaction list in the forms of e-mails. Now you need much more information.

[Xylakant]

A customer is entitled to an invoice and a full invoice requires an address. Most businesses that offer digital goods and services should have had that even before. All the people I know that were affected by the VAT changes certainly had all customer adresses.

This is not a cash sale in a local book store.

[therealmarv]

This is wrong. You are not forced to give your whole address always to buy something, especially on digital goods. In fact e.g. giving only your payment information like your debit/visa card is actually enough for buying stuff legally online as a normal customer in EU (b2c).

[blibble]

just replying again as I remembered another point

previously when I had a new idea that I might be able to turn into a business I could form a limited liability company for about £10, try the idea out with essentially no paperwork at all

then if the idea panned out I could worry about the huge-pain-in-the-ass-that-is-VAT later

now with this regulation it's a problem once I've made my first sale to a non-domestic EU customer, and my agility goes through the floor

EU countries have gone from being fantastic places to start a digital services micro-company to being at best mediocre ones, all to try to stop Amazon avoiding VAT

utter madness: small companies started as side projects turn into the big ones, but apparently we no longer want that

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> EU countries have gone from being fantastic places to start a digital services micro-company to being at best mediocre ones, all to try to stop Amazon avoiding VAT

Well, so how do we deal with Amazon avoiding VAT and still being fair to all players on the market, big and small?

[blibble]

the paperwork is a minor bureaucratic annoyance, it's not a significant problem

the significant problem is now the fact that I have to register for VAT domestically if I want to to sell to people in other EU countries

before if my turnover was below ~£70,000 I paid no VAT at all due to the exemption (giving me a competitive edge vs. big companies with better economies of scale)

after the new regulations if I make any EU sales I have to either fill in VAT returns for EU member state I've sold to (not feasible, that would be hundreds of VAT returns/year in many languages), or register for domestic VAT which will handle that for me, but kills my business model

the EU Commission doesn't see this as a significant problem, likely as it is a beneficiary of VAT (the VAT being an EU mandated tax)

[claudius]

So you’re upset that your tax evasion scheme is now no longer possible and you have to pay taxes?

[blibble]

VAT has an explicit zero rate band in the same way income taxes do

having less turnover or income than the value at which you move above the zero rate band is not evasion

low income people aren't evading taxes by not earning enough to be liable to pay them