In European countries, the tax issue that has attracted widespread attention from cross-border e-commerce sellers is VAT. VAT stands for Value Added Tax, which is a post-sale value-added tax commonly used in European countries, and also refers to the profit tax on the sale price of goods. European countries have different regulations on VAT, and the actual situation is very complicated. Let’s take the UK as an example. For any seller outside the UK, as long as they store goods in the UK for sale to UK buyers, whether they are stored in the UK logistics center or anywhere else, they need to register for VAT in the UK. In some other cases, sellers outside the UK also need to register for VAT in the UK, such as selling inventory stored in other European countries to UK buyers remotely. In addition, the British government requires cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay to cooperate accordingly and take restrictive measures on non-compliant seller accounts, which may be product removal, account restrictions, account freezing, or sales restrictions on other accounts under the name of non-compliant sellers, otherwise the British tax authorities can require Amazon, eBay and other platforms to bear joint and several liability for the seller’s tax burden.

In addition, some European countries also impose other forms of taxes on cross-border e-commerce items. The purpose of some countries is actually to replace, simplify or covertly collect VAT. For example, German Customs decided to implement a single customs clearance fee for e-commerce items from March 1, 2018. Deutsche Post will collect a single customs clearance fee of 6 euros including VAT from the recipient (for imported parcels that are not free of tariffs or taxes, that is, parcels with a price higher than 22 euros). From March 1, 2018, Swedish Customs will also collect VAT (the Swedish VAT rate is 25% of the declared value) from the recipient for all non-EU e-commerce items (including mail), regardless of the value of the goods; in addition, if the value of the goods is less than 150 euros, the recipient needs to pay an additional 7.5 euros service fee to Swedish Post; if the value of the goods is higher than 150 euros, the recipient needs to pay a service fee of 12.5 euros to Swedish Post.