>Thanks so much for responding. We are going to be deploying new sites with >ecommerce capabilities for a number of our European companies, so they will >indeed be 'Europe-to-Europe' or 'Europe-to-elsewhere' - so I'm trying to find >out what kind of scenarios I need to plan for, and how to find out what the >tax rates are - if they are set for every country, or if they vary by locality >within countries, etc. Any help or advice you can pass along would be truly >appreciated. Likewise if you have a solution you've created and are interested >in selling that would certainly be something we'd consider.
AFAIK there's no harmonised sales tax (in the UK: VAT) across EU contries, though there is a system for VAT registered companies to buy from foreign VAT registered companies without paying VAT. This system relies on checking the VAT registration number with a country code prefix to see if it is valid If you're doing retail sales I would assume you wouldn't need this. You would need to know the VAT rate by country which would be fairly simple to find out If you limited your new sites to EU member countries you'd only need to deal with one currency. In theory. Of course the UK is EU but we don't use the Euro. As the UK is likely to be a useful sales area you'd need to look at Euros plus UK Sterling (Great Britain Pounds or GBP) The UK VAT rate is 17.5%. A very small number of items (books and take-away cold food, for example) are VAT zero-rated so, for simplicity's sake, you'd be well-advised to make sure none of your goods fall into that category In the UK we don't have local taxes on goods just a national Value-Added Tax (VAT). Assuming retail sales and non-zero-rated goods, all sales of goods attract VAT with only a few exemptions. Second-hand cars attract no VAT, for example If your sales operation is based in one country and sells to other countries then, AFAIK, the VAT rate for the selling country applies If the sales operation is based in Europe but outside the Euro zone (eg, Jersey) then no VAT is chargeable. In the UK, deliveries from Jersey attract no VAT if their value is < 18 GBP. Above 18 GBP, Customs & Excise, who administer the VAT system, may intercept the packages and charge VAT. They may also charge Duty on some products. So an eBay purchase from the USA, delivered to the UK, may attract 20%-odd duty, plus 17.5% VAT on the purchase price _and_ the duty, plus a handling fee, payable to the courier company on delivery ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
