Comment by laurentl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laurentl | Hacker News Reader

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I didn’t know what this was, so I checked (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...). Long story short: MOSS stands for “mini one stop shop” and looks explicitely designed to make it easier to sell across the EU.

> The Mini One-Stop-Shop (MOSS Scheme) enables you to supply digital services within the EU without the need to register in each EU country you supply to. It can be used by both EU-based businesses and non-EU businesses.

Honestly from reading the quick description of the law, if I was a business I would definitely try to take advantage of the law instead of registering in different countries for the single purposes of paying VAT.

I get that some payment actors allow you to do that easily, while others don’t (yet), and yes this would be a criterion in choosing a payment gateway. But apart from that, I don’t really see how this law is evil, or an illustration that Eurocrats don’t know anything about business (there are plenty of other examples, but this isn’t one). Can you explain in which way the MOSS is “horrible”?

I can sell services domestically up to a limit of about 40,000 euros before I need to register and account for VAT. If I make even a single EU sale, I must immediately register for VAT and pay tax on that sale, either through MOSS or directly to the country my customer is in. The EU is now "generously" considering introducing a limit of 10,000 euros before you need to register for VAT.

I also need to disagree with the parent poster - the rules for what is and is not a digital service are relatively clear - but not clear enough that your local tax officials understand it, apparently. I've had situation where my local tax agency incorrectly interpreted that my services (freelance software development) could be construed as being digital services and thus could fall under this scheme.

Due to this and various other reasons, I am considering emigrating from Europe - some back of the napkin calculations show that I could live a comfortable middle to upper middle class lifestyle in other parts of the world just on the tax difference.

> The EU is now "generously" considering introducing a limit of 10,000 euros before you need to register for VAT.

No, that limit was passed in 2017 and took effect for digital services in January 2019:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...

I.e. if your cross-border EU sales of digital services are less than 10 000 €, you can consider the sales domestic.

Thanks for mentioning that! I remember reading that it was being discussed, but not that it had already been implemented.

It's not much, but still better than nothing.

The fine print around who actually needs to pay. A very simple example - say you sell online courses. Should you register for VAT?

Well the page on MOSS lists “distance teaching” as falling under the definition of digital services. So I guess the answer is yes?

Alright, thank you. Now, if I were to earn, say a total of $1000 [please feel free to substitute this with a more trivial number, however you may define trivial] for the whole year on online courses sold to EU residents (considering its a side gig, not too shabby), should I still register?

No

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in-eu/selling-...

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