The biggest difference in performance between cross-border e-commerce B2C and B2B is that B2C usually delivers a small amount of goods in the form of small packages (mainly postal packages). In order to ensure timeliness, they are generally shipped by air unless the volume is large and the weight is high. It is heavier and is rarely shipped by sea; B2B is a large quantity of goods that are shipped in containers and are shipped by sea in order to reduce costs. Before the rise of cross-border e-commerce B2C, the import and export tax policies of various countries were formulated for B2B bulk trade. B2B trade value was large, and all aspects of the trade process were carried out at a lower frequency. In the past few years, cross-border e-commerce B2C packages have entered the destination country for the purpose of personal items. Even if trade is involved, they are mainly sent to send samples, which is not a conventional form of commodity trade. Therefore, cross-border shipping of personal items, It is applicable to personal postal tax, and purchases of items for personal use below the specified amount or tax amount in each country are entitled to tax reduction and exemption policies. Therefore, in the first few years of the development of cross-border e-commerce B2C, there were few tax issues involved. With the increasing number of cross-border small packages, the impact of cross-border e-commerce on the customs and tariff systems of various countries and the physical retail business of destination countries has become more and more obvious. Major countries with rapid development of cross-border e-commerce are targeting cross-border B2C as a trade More attention has been paid to the identification of forms, customs declaration and clearance, commodity inspection, and formulation of tax policies. Although the tax policies of various countries have not yet been fully determined, it is necessary for us to understand the principles of customs clearance and taxation in advance. It is believed that comprehensive supervision and taxation of cross-border e-commerce B2C will be carried out in major countries in the near future.
The tax policies of various countries around the world are divided into two types: VAT (Value Added Tax) and GST (Goods and Services Tax). The principles behind VAT and GST are different. A simple understanding is a tax levied on terminal consumption behavior and all links of its upstream supply chain. For example, assuming that the GST levied in a certain country is 10%, a product priced at US$100 will be charged US$10 in GST, and consumers will have to pay a total of US$110 for this product. So the question is, who pays the $10 to pay the GST? How to pay? For sellers, commodity costs, logistics costs, etc. are relatively fixed costs that are difficult to reduce, and the $10 to pay the GST is likely to be further squeezed. Therefore, they are unwilling to bear or are unwilling to fully bear the profit, which is ultimately passed on to buyers through pricing.
So how does the buyer pay the consumption tax? There are currently three methods that can be used: The first method is to notify the buyer to pay when the package is cleared by customs, and then it can be cleared. This method requires a lot of work and is difficult to implement. It is very difficult; in the second way, the buyer pays 110 US dollars directly when placing the order, and the seller pays 10 US dollars in tax to the destination country, but the sellers are all over the world, and it is difficult to manage the taxing countries; in the third way, the platform charges 10 US dollars The U.S. dollar tax amount is paid uniformly by the platform, that is, the platform collects taxes on its behalf. This method is easy to manage for the taxing country, but it also requires reaching a consensus with the platform and completing tax docking.
Starting from 2017, Amazon’s European sites require sellers to register a VAT account in the local country and submit it to the Amazon backend. Sellers who fail to submit VAT in a timely and correct manner will not be able to continue selling goods, and there will be other Following Amazon’s European sites for losses such as fund freezes, it is expected that other countries and other platforms will gradually begin to impose taxes, and cross-border e-commerce B2C trade will gradually become standardized in terms of taxation.