Regarding VIES, they ignored those crucial business at the end of the line. B2C. Not many business chains stop at B2B. So the entire chain is not serviced properly by VIES in that the business at the end still has the shit to deal with. That business is me and thosuands of others.
So there is that...then imagine the amount of transactions for this customer in the context of one sale. VAT on the sale, VAT on the postage depends which service, VAT on the card payment provider or paypal depends where the provider is based....amazon pays every week and takes its 15% off the weekly payment into the bank (they do not pay by sales transaction), so you have to add that back when reconciling and then calculate the VAT (do that 5 times as we are in amazon.es, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr , amazon.it and amazon.co.uk).
Ah, Amazon and Paypal. You have my sympathies. They make life utter shit for their business customers, and Amazon's arbitrary separation of business makes no sense - there is actually only one Amazon company, despite the five websites. At least you don't have the additional problem we have in Ireland: selling from Ireland to Ireland on Amazon's platform requires dealing with a company that prices in a foreign currency, incurring a currency risk on every sale (Amazon.co.uk prices in GBP, as you'd expect, but we operate in Euro). Last August, when the GBP dropped 10%, this really hurt businesses.
Regarding the issue of VAT itself, does it make life easier if you compose your shipments into a single-rated sale? The product is unusable without the payment fees and shipping, so you are permitted to charge VAT for those services at the same rate as the goods being shipped: provided that the goods are the largest-value part of the shipment, of course. Doing this means you don't have to deal with different VAT rates on each invoice, just a single code. This can result in higher end prices, though.
(This composition priniciple is in every VAT system in some form or other, but please don't take accountancy advice from a computer programmer... even one who had to implement it once)
We dont have the buydget for handing it all to accountants and investing in flash systems, we depend on the standard shopify web platform, which cannot cope with intra-country VAT and our own man hours. So we want the EU to intervene and simplify.
They are trying, but the national governments all believe that their own VAT arrangements maximise revenue to them, and the EU doesn't have any power to make them change these. It's a long, slow, road that stretches back decades.
Everyone shoots me down when I suggest this...but B2C businesses should only have to pay a sales tax....unless member states have an easier solution? Mostly people say VAT is better, but it is not good enough for B2C. I also spend too much time talking to my partner and discussing VAT traps. VAT across the EU is what s making me consider selling the other half of my business.
Sales tax would probably lose you money - you'd still be liable for VAT on inputs, and you'd have to charge sales tax on outputs.
We have a strategy /dream to market to companies outside the EU so we claim the input and pay nothing on the output.
A modification of that: see if you can get agents to set up in your main EU markets, and move to a wholesale business, serving them. You get the same zero outputs, fewer invoices, and you don't have to deal with international tariffs and customs - something I wouldn't wish on any small business.
In another thread, I may get sympathy, but in the pursuit of highlighting EU inertia /incompetence, I get the feeling that people think we are doing something wrong. In my opinion we are/. We should just stop paying it, fly by the seat o ouyr pantsuntil we get caught and then disappear to Asia wiht the cah we saved / made.
You do have my sympathy, but I feel you're being let down by Amazon more than the EU. Everything you need to make your life easy is within their power to give to you, but they have chosen to organise their European businesses into five silos that don't allow common trader accounts.
From the EU side, yes "incompetence" is actually the reason, but not in the sense you used it. The EU doesn't have power to force this change on the member governments. What you're looking for actually requires a stronger EU.