New European Regulations for E-Commerce

On 5 December 2017, the European Council adopted new regulations concerning e-commerce. With this new step, the Council continues the further unification of the European market. Most of these regulations will take effect in 2019. We provide a brief description below.

Mini One Stop Shop

Businesses providing telecommunications, radio and television broadcasting services or electronically supplied services to private individuals must charge VAT for the country in which their customer is staying or residing.

Examples of electronically supplied services are providing and hosting websites, remote software maintenance, supplying software, providing access to data banks, supplying music or movies, etc. Therefore, whenever suppliers such as Spotify (music), Netflix (movies), One.com (hosting), etc. offer their services to private individuals in the European Union, they must charge VAT for the countries in which these individuals are resident.

To avoid having to register in all EU member states, enterprises may opt to register in only one country (mini one stop shop) and then pay the VAT owed for all other EU member states via that country. Accordingly, they need only to submit a single declaration (instead of a separate declaration for each EU member state).

Micro Businesses 2019

As of 2019, for small (micro) businesses from the EU, immediate registration through the MOSS system is no longer mandatory. As long as the services they provide to private individuals in other EU member states don't exceed EUR 10,000, they may continue to use their own country's VAT rate, even after 2019. If they do exceed this limit, registration through the MOSS system will be required in order to be able to charge and pay VAT for the countries in which the private customers are resident.

Is your enterprise located in, for example, the United States and will you be offering electronically supplied services to private individuals in the EU? If so, Vandelanotte can act as your one stop shop, fulfilling all your VAT obligations for all other European countries from Belgium. That way, you avoid the need for administration for various countries. Additionally, our online platform myVandelanotte allows you to process everything digitally in a simple and efficient way. Want to know more? Please contact us at contact@vdl.be!