Just wait and see .

Itunes updated their terms&conditions apparently:
https://twitter.com/SpinstarC/status/551739819899228160

EU countries getting the same treatment as fraudsters:
https://www.sendowl.com/blog/fraud-filtering-now-available.html

My previous opinion as a customer was kind of laidback but after reading more on this, it is incredibly harming to smaller businesses.

A need to register as VAT payer in every single country they are selling requires a lot of administration which is something a corporation doesn't struggle so much as, let's say, an indie developer. I am very interested in a further development of this botched law.

I'm currently doing independent work for virtual music insturments. Apparently this VAT is going to affect my latest payout, I'm curous how it's going to turn out - I'm already getting docked a huge % from the website selling the product, plus paypal takes a % for transfer, and now this VAT % thing...

I hate to say it but wouldn't it make more sense to add that tax onto the original purchasers price? Paying a couple more dollars for a product would be far less for the customer than docking me a huge accumulated amount of sales %.

I'm also curious of how they are even calculating the amounts when the purchases are directly through paypal anyway.

The original point was supposed to block corporations from using tax heavens. I agree there is a real interest in restricting this behavior but the implementation seems to be either very underdeveloped or intentionally giving an advantage to corpos.

But to your suggestion - do you think a customer would be tempted to buy from you if s/he has to deal with additional tax stuff at the end of fiscal year? I doubt it. Especially if there is an alternative choice without with scrap around.

I would have assumed it would be like a sales tax, where the % is added on at the time of sale.

I don't know how it works in the US but here sales tax has been tied to a business and it was the seller who was expected to calculate VAT into its accounting. Customer just pays a base price + VAT to the business. And the business paid VAT to the country they were residing in.

If the business was based in the UK or other EU country, they didn't need to register here to pay VAT.

Now it is changed that they have to pay VAT in the country of purchase (e.g. according to geo-IP or debit card) which means it needs to register there.

If you would transfer a responsibility to pay sale tax/VAT to a customer, the customer would have to deal with a ministry of finance instead of you.
I think it is safe to assume anybody who has been lucky to deal with the their hard-to-read forms and regulations (me included), does want to avoid this activity if possible. An average person who doesn't own a trade licence doesn't deal with the ministry of finance.

One of the defences GOG presented when they were trying to (and succeeded to) introduce regional prices was that they currently absorbed EU VAT charges. Why they would change it now rather than then makes no sense. They would have to put all the back end logic in whatever in order to correctly calculate taxes, but then they'd also have to wire in some UI changes to get that price fed back up to us, all for about 10p more or less (which will probably balance out), and if they did, all they'd do is introduce a tendency to either register yourself at a cheaper country, or get someone else to buy the codes.

This might be a very illusional post but it occurs to me that a uniform VAT tax rate all over EU would make life of businesses and peasants even easier. Let's say 20% because that is about the mean of them all. I know, totally illusory. Sooner hell will freeze over.

Yesterday, I was renewing a subscription service which was always 9,99€ but it went up to 12,09€ trough Google Wallet (+21% Belgian VAT). Urgh! :(

Does it mean that this company is now paying taxes?

Well, seems logical to me...

BTW, Is there any Italian here?

I've read a tweet of Winter Wolves this morning about some new administrative burden for Italian e-commerce but he says it's not related to new EU VAT laws. So out of curiosity, what's this? (don't want to ask him directly as he already has a rough day).
https://twitter.com/pcmacgames/status/552860030035558400

That it's easier for business really seems to be a strange reason.

Didn't they just change it so companies can no longer "cheat" by registering in a country with low or no VAT?
Or course it's harder for businesses now.

For customers... I think it's actually fairer even though it means many people have to pay more. The money you earn considers the VAT you have to pay for products in your own country after all. It's your own country that decides the VAT you have to pay after all.