The EU is a single market, and the flow of goods between EU countries is not considered import and export. The customs clearance declaration procedure in Europe generally does not require the assistance of the recipient. There are two ways to go through customs. One is to go through customs directly at the port of arrival for international transportation, and then transport it to the destination via inland. This is the customs clearance adopted by most express delivery and air delivery lines, and the “cargo-to-mail” delivery. The other is to cross customs at the port instead of clearing customs. When the package arrives at the destination country, it will be cleared and taxed separately. For example, some special line packages are imported from the Netherlands, Belgium and other places, and the recipients in Italy or Germany have to pay customs duties locally. The EU’s “New Business VAT Law” will be implemented in 2021, realizing a universal VAT, stipulating that all packages directly imported from abroad to the EU are exempt from import VAT as long as the value of the goods is less than 150 euros, but the exporter/seller needs to register a VAT tax number, cancel the 22 euro VAT low-value package exemption clause, and declare sales VAT to the tax bureau. It is no longer acceptable for tax agents to pay import taxes and fees on behalf of the seller.
The tax department reserves the right to impose punitive taxes on orders with historical problems. After the overseas warehouse sellers have completed tax registration and obtained VAT, they need to retain the product sales link as the basis for the tax department to review the sales tax and duty-free goods; and retain the tax payment certificate for the sales tax declaration in the EU region, in preparation for the tax department to conduct spot checks on the outbound orders of the overseas warehouse. The declaration form information of EU countries is basically the same. Overseas warehouse companies must do a good job of KYC (Know Your Customer) customer management according to the requirements of the tax bureau, such as proofreading customer VAT, retaining import declaration documents, and recording distribution and logistics documents. If the overseas warehouse company does not follow the requirements and do a good job of checking its customers, it will bear the joint and several tax liability of the customer. The postal networks of European countries are relatively reliable, and the cross-border commercial express delivery in the EU is also very developed, including DHL, Hermes, ParcelForce, GLS, Yodel, Whistl, DPD, etc. There are many choices. For example, in Spain, in addition to the postal Correos, there are also MRW, SEUR and Nacex, with a high on-time delivery rate and a delivery time of generally two or three days. The parcel delivery market in Italy is not highly concentrated. In addition to SDA Express and MistralAir, which are owned by Poste Italiane, there are many start-up delivery companies in the market, such as the well-known e-commerce express Milkman, and there are also many parcels delivered by express delivery companies such as DHL and BRT.