4 ms·

Of course it's not. In fact the complexity of vat in europe is a disadvantage when dealing with things like small transactions. We have resorted to using an Am

• gamblor956 2y ago
  VAT is simple unless your company has a very large, broad set of products. It's a PITA to deal with due to the invoicing and documentation requirements, but that's due to the volume of work required, not the complexity of it.
  • kyrra 2y ago
    So it's simple but hard?
    • secondcoming 2y ago
      Simple but tedious
    • surfingdino 2y ago
      Expensive. Dealing with all EU tax authorities is expensive and that cost can be prohibitive for smaller businesses.
    • gamblor956 2y ago
      It's simple but it's a lot of busywork. This can be expensive for companies with a lot of purchases as the tax authorities demand a copy of every invoice regardless of the size of the transaction. Other than the volume of paperwork involved, the actual technical aspects of VAT are far simpler than sales tax, as most countries only have a handful of VAT rates.
  • milesrout 2y ago
    Yeah unfortunately EU countries have adopted complicated VAT systems in the sense that they have different rates on different categories of goods and services. New Zealand has a much more sensible system: other than a few categories of services that are zero-rated (like land) for GST (what NZ calls VAT) everything is charged at a flat rate of 15%. It eliminates all the bullshit like decade long court proceedings about whether something is a cake or a biscuit, or silly social media campaigns about whether tampons are "luxury goods". It is all taxed at 15%. That being said, the system is not more complex in the EU really, just more annoying.
• epolanski 2y ago
  There's nothing complex in vat and in general it's paid only once, when it reaches the latest customer. Most B2Bs don't pay vat obviously.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • coolgoose 2y ago
    You never had to handle cross country VAT it seems, and the stupid regulations that changed to make it require vat collection on the country of the payee :)
    • Ekaros 2y ago
      They are sensible regulations, but single market consisting of multiple countries with own fiscal and taxation policies is always somewhat complex thing. Still, my understanding is that if you know the country and classify product like you know the rate. So it is less complex than sales taxes which might be local in other places.
    • omnimus 2y ago
      Not anymore. For few years there has been EU VAT one stop shop system where you pay to your local tax office. And with digital products it's even easier with "VAT Mini One Stop Shop" (MOSS). So for EU to EU company it's actually very simple. But in mean time many other countries made some version of "digital tax". So you want to have this handled by someone anyway.
    • epolanski 2y ago
      > You never had to handle cross country VAT it seems PL5472244433 This is my European vat number, you can check it on VIES. Vat is reverse charged from years, nobody pays it in B2B.
  • Muromec 2y ago
    It isn't paid once, otherwise you would not need credits.
• thomasmg 2y ago
  The VAT is not complex. And why would an American company be better at invoicing?
  • deleted 2y ago
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