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This will eventually increase the price of digital goods or decrease it's quality. The problem is VAT. This is another advantage for VAT-free USA startups. ¿May
by lucio 12y ago
This will eventually increase the price of digital goods or decrease it's quality. The problem is VAT. This is another advantage for VAT-free USA startups. ¿Maybe this will also give an impulse to cryptocurrencies in EU?
- wbond 12y agoAccording to my understanding, these new VAT rules mean that startups in any country will now have to collect VAT for digital goods and make quarterly filings with one of the MOSS setups - UK, Ireland, etc.
- mike_hearn 12y agoIt'll probably just hurt cryptocurrencies instead of helping. It seems EU governments think the "solution" is everyone sells via app stores, i.e. third parties that handle all the complexity for you. Perhaps payment processors will handle this for cryptocurrencies, but then one of the goals of systems like Bitcoin is to be free of middlemen, so if you have to put them back just because of the complexity of tax paperwork then it becomes less interesting. Additionally, the accounting is already so complicated, if you're selling for BTC instead of local currencies I suspect at least one countries tax authority would throw a wobbler and want to treat it in a contradictory way to others. Of course, you can also just ignore this and become a tax evader in a foreign country you have no intention of visiting. The question then becomes, will countries start using the European Arrest Warrant system to trigger arrest and extradition of (say) British people for failure to file taxes in Hungary? Quite possibly! The world is getting more globalised, so increasingly and especially for online businesses, this ends up meaning instead of following no countries law, or just your "home" countries, you end up having to follow all of them at once!