[lotsofmangos]

"If you ask me – YES it is crazy. There are 28 member states and over 75 different VAT rates – which I should all know and create different invoices for."

If only we had some sort of programmable calculating device to automate this kind of drudgery.

[Jongseong]

The seller is also supposed to collect evidence of the location of the purchaser (billing addresses, IP addresses, etc.). By the time you're required to collect private data for each transaction, it becomes more than simply the kind of drudgery you can automate away and becomes a burden that is a bit too much for one-person entreprises.

[lotsofmangos]

Purchaser inputs details in online form, tax is applied by location, purchaser buys thing. What am I missing here?

[Jongseong]

At least in the UK, you'll be required to keep such private data for 10 years, which also means registering as data processors and controllers with the Information Commissioner's Office. See this: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/revenue-and-custo...

Also, try explaining how simple all this is to the self-employed women selling crafts online using PayPal.

[lotsofmangos]

If you are selling crafts online, you have to take a purchasers location in order to deliver stuff. If you are doing this through your own shop, then all the decent ecommerce backends have plugins for eu vat stuff and if you are doing it through an existing marketplace the same applies. And I don't think whether they are women really affects this.

[Jongseong]

What you are overlooking is that the vast majority of these people (and women are disproportionately represented, including many stay-at-home mums doing this in their spare time) did not have to deal with VAT _at all_ previously because they never came anywhere near the VAT threshold. They have never had to apply for it. Suddenly, they have to register and comply with not one but two government bureaucracies, and submit quarterly statements on the VAT collected. (By the way, the rules affect the sale of digital items, like knitting patterns and ebooks, rather than physical goods like crafts because the VAT threshold is being abolished on digital goods.)

[lotsofmangos]

Or annually with your other tax affairs if your income is less than £1.3 million.

Which means that while it has to be taken into consideration it does not really affect stuff that much.

It is a cost of doing business in the EU and it does make things more complex, but nowhere near as complex as before the EU came into effect.

[pja]

Nothing. This really is a storm in a teacup.