Foreign traders must know the tax rate knowledge of European VAT countries

VAT: The word abbreviation, Value-added Tax, originally originated in France, is a tax system applied in the European Union. Equivalent to the value added tax in China. In some areas, such as Australia, it is also called GST (Goods and Services Tax). In international trade, vat generally refers to the meaning of value-added tax. According to the tax rate of each country, the value-added tax paid by foreign trade personnel is also different.

United Kingdom

The main advantage of the UK is the low tax rate. The UK Taxation Bureau requires sellers to declare compliance and pay taxes on time. The UK's low tax rate is no longer able to enjoy the deduction of imported VAT, but for some big sales that are declared at the normal rate, in the case of the United Kingdom, if the seller retains the C88 document and the C79 document issued by the customs in the month, it can enjoy it. Deduction of imported VAT. And many sellers have the VAT tax number in the UK and mistakenly believe that if there is no sales of the product, then not reporting VAT will not have much impact.

But in fact, in the UK, whether or not there is no sales, as long as there is no tax number, you need to declare VAT. If the seller does not file tax in a timely manner, the UK Taxation Bureau can directly calculate the tax through the data provided by the back end of the platform. Sellers must not be lucky enough to wait until the staff of the tax bureau calculate taxes for you, which is the worst case.

Germany

Germany's VAT is a normal tax rate, there is no low tax rate, the German tax bureau is very strict in terms of supervision, and the deduction of import tax is also relatively high. German customs clearance of offshore companies in Germany requires EU companies to act as guarantors. As long as the declaration is provided to the offshore company, it is subject to joint and several liability and the prosecution period is 6 years. In the common sense, the German customs clearance system should be able to distinguish the actual importer from the guarantor. However, the customs clearance software used by the existing German customs system and customs clearance company has not been upgraded very well, resulting in the actual importer and the guarantee party not being well distinguished.

For example, if the EORI of the actual offshore enterprise is filled in the reporting party, it will be restricted after several importes; however, if the information of the guarantor is filled in the guarantor information column, the tax agent and the tax bureau will consider the guarantor to be The importer should not be taxed by the actual importer, and eventually the customer will pay the tax, but the tax agent will not give the deduction.

It is recommended that sellers who encounter such a situation can provide other auxiliary documents such as bills of lading, commercial invoices, logistics documents, etc. through the logistics agent, and inform the tax bureau through the tax agency to inform the real situation, the general tax bureau will accept the deduction.

France

In view of the implementation of the French anti-fraud bill, Amazon will synchronize the sales data of the platform in 2019 to the French tax bureau by January 31, 2020. Since then, the French tax bureau will be as strict as the German tax bureau in terms of supervision. It should be noted that the French VAT is a normal tax rate and there is no low tax rate. And because the British Brexit, the French tax bureau's document compliance requirements for import VAT deductions are implemented in advance, the current deductible customs documents must reflect the French EORI number and its own tax number in the document to be recognized, At present, some customers only have the British EORI number, and they can't apply for the French EORI number before they actually leave the UK. If it is cleared by the French customs during this time, there may be some problems in the tax deduction. It is recommended that the client arrange the customs clearance state during this period to avoid the problem that the tax cannot be deducted.

Italy

Italy also does not have a low tax rate. The Italian tax bureau has a special invoicing system for Italian companies. The data of the billing system is linked to the back end of the tax bureau data. Although the VAT rate of transactions between EU companies B2B is 0, companies need to collect and report invoices for B2B transactions, so that the tax bureau can conduct jurisdiction and comparison of invoices.

Spain

The VAT in Spain is also a normal tax rate, and the deduction documents are subject to customs documents.

Czech and Dutch

The Czech and Dutch VATs are deferred, meaning that companies only need to pay customs duties in the reporting country and do not need to pay import VAT. This type of reporting is very helpful to sellers in terms of cash flow. However, tax deferral compliance is supported by a very high tax professional, the core of which is whether the customer actually pays VAT in the country of destination. If the customer cannot guarantee these two points, then the declaration of legal compliance will result in non-compliance.

The VAT policies of European countries will differ in the frequency of declarations and tax rates, but the supervision of cross-border e-commerce VAT issues by tax bureaus will become stricter and stricter. This is the overall trend of European countries.