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Ask HN: Does your (non EU) company charge VAT to European customers?

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Re: Ask HN: Does your (non EU) company charge VAT to European customers?

#11

Post by rmc »

jcr wrote: post #8
jibjab wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your reply. Regarding #1: True, it seems that there are some countries like the UK [1] have thresholds, but others don't seem to have any (eg Ireland [2]). No matter if they exist or not, there are still companies that have large EU based turnover (Github, 37signals), and they too don't charge VAT. Regarding #2: I agree. It's not that I want to convince anyone to start charging VAT. I'm simply trying to un…

You might also want to read up on the "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich" approaches to dodging EU taxation. But if you're at work, searching those phrases without safe search might be a bit interesting... ;) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b42010431...

Ireland has a low corporation tax 12½%, to avail of that you need to incorporate an Irish company. This has nothing to do with Ireland's VAT rate (of about 21%)

Re: Ask HN: Does your (non EU) company charge VAT to European customers?

#12

Post by rmc »

For the record, a 'Directive' is not a law upon people. It's something that individual member states must implement. So Each EU member state must implement this law. The EU has no courts for people (you can only bring countries to the EU courts), and likewise it has no prisons for people. It would not be the European Union that charges you with this, but it would have to be an individual member state.

Re: Ask HN: Does your (non EU) company charge VAT to European customers?

#14

Post by jibjab »

SabrinaDent wrote: post #13

However, I have never seen non-EU based companies do this. Why is that? iStock charges VAT based on billing residency. So does Big Fish Games. That's just where I've spent money today, so yeah, it's common.

Hmm, so I guess the thresholds Patio11 mentioned exist.

iStock and Big Fish Games are very large companies with several offices around the world and a large share of B2C sales, so they started charging VAT.

Apparently, most SAAS companies don't make these thresholds, not even the larger ones, as github/slicehost/37signals/mailchimp/and many more don't charge VAT at all...

I still wonder what those thresholds are though..

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