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One of the big practical difficulties with the whole EU VAT mess is that different EU tax authorities can and do interpret the same rules in different ways. For example, in the UK, HMRC seem to have stated relatively clearly that incorporating this kind of manual step currently puts the transaction outside of the scope of the new rules, but I've seen reports that other states aren't accepting this. Even if you go via your home state's One Stop Shop service, you're still now subject to audit and potentially penalisation by any of the other tax authorities if they don't like your numbers.

Of course, the send-it-by-email strategy also only applies if you're talking about a one-off "digital download" style transaction. That seems to include a lot of tiny microbusinesses, but it's no use for people doing, say, X-as-a-service or library/subscription style web sites who happen to have a small number of customers from other nations in the EU.