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“I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

happybootstrapper.com

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Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#121

Post by santacluster »

Major_Grooves wrote: post #43

Yes, this has been quite an amazing f-up by the tax authorities in the EU. I wrote a blogpost about it the other day: http://blog.satago.co.uk/2014/11/what-is-this-vatmoss-mess/ imo the major f-up is removing the tax threshold for selling digital goods - even if you sell a £1 kintting pattern you have to register for VAT now.

The really major f-up is that of online sellers (it's a major pain for sellers of physical goods as well, it's just easier for them to at least know which country they're selling to) who did absolutely nothing during the entire process of creating and implementing this change, and only now start to whine when it's way, way too late.

The reasoning behind the law is perfectly logical, and the problem they're trying to solve very real. The actual implementation utterly impractical, and a major burden on pretty much everyone.

But the only people who could have told the political dinosaurs and clueless civil servants just how impractical chose to pretend the change would somehow magically just go away.

This is one piece of legislation that could probably have been stopped or redirected quite early on, if those affected had just bothered to try.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#122

Post by pja »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #108
Jongseong wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seller is also supposed to collect evidence of the location of the purchaser (billing addresses, IP addresses, etc.). By the time you're required to collect private data for each transaction, it becomes more than simply the kind of drudgery you can automate away and becomes a burden that is a bit too much for one-person entreprises.

Purchaser inputs details in online form, tax is applied by location, purchaser buys thing. What am I missing here?

Nothing. This really is a storm in a teacup.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#123

Post by chris_va »

bad_user wrote: post #6

" The change was made because EU wants to get more money from American companies " That is not true - VAT is and has always been a tax for the buyer, not the seller. Of course, having VAT is awful for us - in my country it's an astronomical 24%. But that's besides the point.

"VAT is and has always been a tax for the buyer, not the seller"

Does this distinction actually mean anything material?

Buyers start with all of the money, and it ends up split between the seller and the government. From the buyer's perspective, it doesn't really doesn't matter if this is an income tax on the seller, or a VAT tax on the transaction.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#124

Post by nagrom »

ed_blackburn wrote: post #111
nagrom wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's said rather often, but I'm not at all certain that it's true. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100194407/out...

If you didn't know Daniel Hannan is a /very/ partisan politician, who is incredibly anti-European.

Well, he would claim that he was anti-EU, and not anti-European. But if he has the figures wrong, you should tell him (and me!)

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#125

Post by Wintamute »

colechristensen wrote: post #86
fargolime wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. Plus a much better retirement plan. In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. And unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement. In the US you're lucky to get 3 weeks vaca…

Things which aren't true: >In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. >unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement Your health and car insurance covers exactly what it says it covers, and retirement plans aren't a mystery. In America you take personal responsi…

Brit here. I like to take personal responsibility for choices like career path, holidays, hobbies, where to put down roots, whether to have a family, who to love, who to have sex with, how much to drink, what books to read, what religion to follow or not follow, what to have for dinner. As for how I subsist when I'm too old or sick to work, or when I wake up in hospital after an accident ... those sorts of choices I'm more than happy for the government to make, in general they do a great job all things considered.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#126

Post by iopq »

toyg wrote: post #42
fulafel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many essentials like food and bus tickets have lowered (or zero) tax rates, and it's printed on every receipt you get. Not really regressive or hidden. Taxing wealth has big problems with transparency and evasion. Progressive taxation is not a means to an end, just one mechanism to implement income redistribution. See eg basic income proposals with flat income tax. But a worrying trend in EU lately has been to cut pa…

> Many essentials like food and bus tickets have lowered (or zero) tax rates That's charity, not progressive taxation. Besides, VAT is fixed-rate, which makes it regressive in practice. > it's printed on every receipt you get But nobody is taught how it works, in school or elsewhere, and unless you run your own business you'll never find out. Also, because it's segmented, atomic changes to different segments are usua…

It's not possible to tax wealth. Unless you want to tell me how many Bitcoins I own.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#127

Post by baconner »

pc86 wrote: post #99
fargolime wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Categorically, unequivocally wrong Hyperbole much? They can charge you for services / products rendered and which aren't covered by insurance, and they can charge any price they want and you're legally obligated to pay it. Of 3 times I helped my parents with processing their hospital bills, it was over $10K in non-covered expenses each time.

Is your complaint that a hospital can charge you for a service that was rendered, that they perform services you might have to pay for, or that they assume you're not interested in rate-shopping your surgeon? Yes, you are legally obligated to pay for services rendered. I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone to argue the opposite, though.

The problem isn't that you have to pay for services rendered. The problem is the pricing and service system is extremely opaque. You can receive services without ever having an opportunity to know what those services are or how much they will cost. And that's not restricted to high emergency care its everything. It's not comparable to paying for services in other industries where pricing is presented up front or at least before services are rendered. The opaqueness leads to price inflation as well so service prices aren't regulated by the consumer market.

For example once my wife had to go to the er and we'd taken great pains to know ahead of time what hospital was covered best under our insurance. Yet the bill contained test services performed in he hospital that were not covered because a room in the hospital was operated by a separate lab company that didn't accept our insurance. There was literally no way for us as consumers to know that one type of blood test regularly covered by our insurance in a covered facility would go through the magic door into an uncovered facility. Price inflation and surprise bills are emergent properties of the system and that needs to change.

I am all for consumers having choice and taking personal responsibility for their care but our healthcare system makes that effectively impossible.

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#128

Post by mikeash »

fargolime wrote: post #85
pc86 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A hospital can charge you for anything and you're legally obligated to pay it. Categorically, unequivocally wrong. Hospitals cannot just make up charges. They cannot bill you for procedures/tests/services you did not receive (and if they do, you are not "legally obligated to pay it"). I know the anti-US healthcare circle jerk is pretty strong here, but we don't need to just make things up in order to prove a point.

> Categorically, unequivocally wrong Hyperbole much? They can charge you for services / products rendered and which aren't covered by insurance, and they can charge any price they want and you're legally obligated to pay it. Of 3 times I helped my parents with processing their hospital bills, it was over $10K in non-covered expenses each time.

You previously said "charge you for anything" which is substantially broader than "charge you for services/products rendered."

Reading your previous statement literally (and I saw no reason to read it in any other way), it meant that a hospital could charge you for buying an elephant and you'd be legally obligated to pay.

And you're complaining about other people using hyperbole?

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#129

Post by [deleted] »

colechristensen wrote: post #86
fargolime wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The last three have some form of nationalised healthcare though, which the US does not. Plus a much better retirement plan. In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. And unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement. In the US you're lucky to get 3 weeks vaca…

Things which aren't true: >In the US you can wake up in a hospital after someone rear-ended you, to find you are bankrupt and going to become homeless, even when you had the best insurance. >unless the stock market returns 8% most people are going to have a rough retirement Your health and car insurance covers exactly what it says it covers, and retirement plans aren't a mystery. In America you take personal responsi…

[deleted]

Re: “I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?”

#130

Post by jkulmala »

Major_Grooves wrote: post #43

Yes, this has been quite an amazing f-up by the tax authorities in the EU. I wrote a blogpost about it the other day: http://blog.satago.co.uk/2014/11/what-is-this-vatmoss-mess/ imo the major f-up is removing the tax threshold for selling digital goods - even if you sell a £1 kintting pattern you have to register for VAT now.

That's a great blog post, Major_Grooves - Thanks for shouting out!

I totally agree and addressed that in my other blog post which is targeted to EU folks: http://www.happybootstrapper.com/2014/eu-vat-changes-online-...

I hope lots of people read it and sign up the petition to set up a revenue threshold: https://www.change.org/p/pierre-moscovici-a-unilateral-suspe...

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