Do you have some known cases where this happened? I still can't believe this. The EU normally doesn't have a direct connection to the companies. It suggests laws which must or may be followed by the single countries, but I never heard they sue a single company because it doesn't sell to all of the EU countries. Because that would mean, every "Kleinunternehmer" in Germany who is selling online and has not registered in the other 27 member states (most probably do not do this, as the VAT-Id number you need basically removes the "Kleinunternehmerregelung") is illegaly selling to other countries.IdeasVacuum wrote:That is broadly what the Campaign seeks to address, but it is only looking at the EU. A lot of businesses in the UK have already closed down because the cost of administering the VAT exceeds the profit made on the items for sale.Otherwise you would need to do the tax for every country in this world, which would mean there would never ever be any start-up any more. Nobody would every try to sell anything online any more if you'd have to sell it world wide. You'd need a whole team just working on the tax for you.
The rule is this: If you are selling digital goods like software, e-books, pdfs etc online via a website or 3rd party market-place and you are based in an EU member state (e.g. Germany), you must make those goods available for purchase by the whole of the EU, i.e. all 28 member states. If you state, for example, "My products are only for sale in Italy" the EU are going to charge you with discrimination.
[EDIT]
I found something about this topic: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/e ... 456_EN.pdf
So I don't think they will ever get this done if 74% refuse to sell in some other countries.In 2010, 74 % of retailers in the EU did not sell products or services to customers
in other EU countries32 . This is also the case for online-shops based in the UK. 67 % of
those businesses surveyed do not target consumers resident in other Member States33. This
is confirmed by the findings of the “Mystery Shopper” study since only 61 % of the
attempted purchases were successful34.
