Frequently asked questions on the OSS

If you sell goods or digital services to private customers in other EU countries, VAT is due in your customer's country. Without the One Stop Shop you would have to register in each of those countries. With the OSS you declare that turnover in a single quarterly return with the Dutch tax authorities, broken down per country, and they distribute the amount to the member states concerned. You register once instead of in every country separately.

There is a threshold of € 10,000 per calendar year, excluding VAT. Your digital services to private customers in other EU countries and your intra-Community distance sales count towards it together. It is one threshold for both. If you stay below it in both the current and the preceding year, you can keep charging Dutch VAT. Once you exceed it, VAT is due in your customer's country from that moment. You can also opt in voluntarily, which can be sensible if you are heading for the threshold anyway.

Only cross-border sales to private customers in other EU countries. What you supply to Dutch customers stays in your ordinary VAT return. Sales to businesses with a valid VAT number do not belong there either. Those run through the intra-Community supply at the zero rate and the EC Sales List. Exports outside the EU are also out. Getting that split right is the actual work, and it is where things most often go wrong.

The rate of the country where your customer is, which differs per country and per product. A book or a food item may carry a reduced rate in one country and not in another, and the rates change fairly regularly. This is exactly where a webshop quietly goes wrong: the setting was configured once and never checked again.

Per calendar quarter, and both filing and payment must happen within one month of the end of that quarter. If you sold nothing in a quarter you still have to file a nil return. Corrections to an earlier return are processed in a later one, not by refiling the old return.

No. As soon as you hold stock in another EU country, in a marketplace's fulfilment centre for instance, you are making local supplies there and must register for VAT in that country. The OSS does not cover it. Moving your own goods to that country is also a transaction you have to account for. Businesses shipping from several countries usually discover this when a letter arrives from one of them.