EU to implement VAT on small shipments in electronic commerce in 2019

The European Union is to implement new rules in the system of VAT collection in electronic commerce outside the EU beginning with 2019. In order to help European e-traders, they are to abolish the exemption by which purchasers of goods worth up to EUR 22 outside the EU are exempt from tax payment.

As the European media report, the exports of the European Commission believe that exemption from VAT for traders outside the EU puts them at an advantage in relation to the European competition.

This, of course, is not the only reason. The Commission justifies the abolition of this exemption by saying that control procedures have established that these packages mostly contain expensive goods from China with false declarations.

As Vecernji List reports, the new rule should be implemented throughout the EU in 2019, being only a part of a big reform of VAT, which will be gradually implemented by 2021, all to the end of facilitating the commerce within the EU.

However, it is clear that more concrete calculations are behind this decision, Politika writes. The Commission has already estimated that its local e-traders would save around EUR 5 billion a year and it is projected that the taxation of small shipments would put around a billion euros in the budgets of the member-states.

The EU statistics say that, each year, around 150 million packages worth under EUR 22 each are imported every year from the third countries. A lot of them, it is assumed, contain goods with false declarations, of much greater value, such as phones, tablets and other devices. Buyers pay VAT for the same goods ordered in an EU country, which is why European traders can in no way be competitive with suppliers from countries outside the EU, Politika writes.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION Bruxelles

European Commission

VAT on small shipments

VAT in European Union

electronic commerce

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small shipments

import of good to the EU

import of goods from third countries to the EU

electronic trade

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