It would be fair if they'd also provide goods and services to match the taxation. Offer everyone everything for a decent standard of living by default and it'd make perfect sense to only leave small amounts of money in the hands of the people, for some additional entertainment or luxuries or such. The problem is that now we have both high taxes and reduced and low-quality assured services, and next to no goods offered directly except for the very poorest perhaps.

I have heard this particular EU idea being looked at for a few months and it just looks to be making things more complex then efficient.

I guess in the long run we will just learn to accept, but why do they not just set the EU VAT rate as a very simple 15% across the board and be done with it, or dispose of VAT and just charge a single cost at the point of earning, say 15% of your wages. They get there money and we all would get just a tad less screwed over.
I already have to pay 20% of my wages to tax, why not just dump it all at that point. It would push the cost of living down considerably and enable people to actually buy things, pushing businesses forward again. - Just seems to simple for any governmental body to consider.

Holy shit, 27%?

To answer you both, the issue of taxation harmonisation across the EU is such a minefield that most people mention it once or twice, very quietly and even then when in a loud room. Taxation remains the sovereign right of Member States and any harmonisation of tax rates, tax bases or tax policies that takes place is done rarely and only if there is little doubt that it is necessary for the internal market to function.

There have been many debates recently on harmonising corporate tax and guess what, Ireland (amongst other countries) blew a gasket. Why do you think so many foreign companies are set up in Ireland, Luxembourg and as GOG has shown, Cyprus? No country is going to give up on the advantage this brings, even though everyone else agrees that it is a beggar thy neighbour policy.

It took years just to get Austria, Luxembourg and the UK (the former agreeing only if the other two did so as well) to agree to information exchange on accounts held by nationals from other Member States. Plus this was only so that they could no longer avoid paying taxes back home. Now imagine if they tried to come to an agreement on the level of taxation on interest earnings.

Step by step action and only under drastic circumstances is the only way taxation discussion progresses at the EU level. Call that good or bad, but such are the facts and a harmonised VAT is out of the question. Just look at the USA for comparison. It's a taxation nightmare, perhaps even more so than the EU.

As I said before, I do not intend to discuss taxation and fairness at this point. I only wish to point out the intricacies of the EU's functioning.

Indeed. It will mean A LOT more effort for me. It friggin' sucks.

Yep .

"Resistance is futile" but some small biz-owners keep fighting to stay independant (wondering how many "artists" will remain on bandcamp & co...) until the end of it all in two weeks....

https://digitalmicrobusinessactiongroup.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/twitterstorm-ahead-eu-vat-action-tuesday-16th-december-10am-gmt11am-cet/

https://twitter.com/hashtag/vatmoss
https://twitter.com/hashtag/vatmess

Thanks for the interesting news, ne_zavarj.

I am curious how this will be implemented in reality. As of now, even if you pay VAT of country of seller, some sellers charge you extra based on your region and not related to your VAT at all.

Some stores already do this (i.e. showing a core price and calculate VAT when you are about to check out).

In case of games, a difference is sometimes 50% when shopping from the UK (including shipping) despite 1% of difference in VAT.

Let me predict it won't benefit the end customer at all.

GOG will have to comply with it but apart from that not much changes for them.

The question is: is this affecting Cyprus or Luxembourg, the Chanel Islands, or all these other small countries with a financial sector specialized in tax evasion?

What does this have to do with Bandcamp? I'm not on Bandcamp myself but I always presumed that Bandcamp is responsible for the sales and distribution and each individual artist only deals with them. And I like to think that Bandcamp is a large enough operation to easily fulfill the requirements of this new legislation. Or are they just the kind of middleman that Google Play is and don't take any responsibility for the tax stuff? (if anything they really should do that - it would be beneficial to both them and the artists either way)

Edit: Okay, just read up on it. Bandcamp are like Google when it comes to this. Friggin' idiots. It blows my mind that a company that already has to manage so much complex stuff won't go the little extra mile with the tax stuff. Morons. Lazy ass morons.

Cyprus and Luxembourg are considered as "normal" EU countries so they must comply too (After all, eurocrats are after Amazon VAT money which is based in Luxembourg). Special areas like Channel Islands are maybe exempted but I need proper updates on this.

I thought of releasing some stuff in the future on bandcamp but it won't possible due to the administrative hassle. For games, Itch.io falls also into the same "laziness" pitfall....

Rules of thumb: if you sell through a paypal widget, you're screwed even if you don't host the file on your own server. I'm also wondering how the humble store widget will evolve has they only require an e-mail adress before processing to paypal (as you don't necessarly need a humble store account to retrieve your game).

Yeah, same for me. I was going to release an album on Bandcamp during the next months. Not under these circumstances I won't. I will also have to pull my app from Google Play this December (or at least in every country except Poland) until I alter it to only run on ads. Which kinda sucks because the ads generate a completely laughable amount of revenue compared to the in-app purchases.

Since this discussion was opened up again, and noone seems to have made this particular point, allow me to do so.

I see people mention VAT rates of 21%, 24% and 27%. The Danish VAT rate is 25%. This particular figure is clever, because it makes calculating the VAT awfully easy, being 1/4th or 1/5th of the price, respectively, depending on whether the price you start with has VAT included or not. Or in decimals, multiplying the price by either 1.25 or 0.8 in order to get "the other price". These calculations are much easier to do in your head with a high degree of precision than in cases where the VAT rate is a more "awkward" number.

All in all, I think there is something to be said for a VAT system that is easy to figure out, even if some might think the rate too high.

What is easier for me is that I know I'll pay 4% less VAT on the Unity Asset Store (from 25% danish rate to 21% Belgian rate), that's the only consolation prize I get from this mess :o)

Does it also mean that KS has to pay VAT now?