Slashdot Mirror
2015 Means EU Tax Increase On Cloud Storage, E-books and Smartphone Applications
schwit1 writes With the new year, a change in fiscal rules in the European Union is increasing the tax on many purchases of digital content like e-books and smartphone applications. Under the new rules, first approved in 2008, the tax rate on digital services like cloud storage and movie streaming will be determined by where consumers live, and not where the company selling the product has its European headquarters. Tax experts say Europe's revamped rules could add up to an extra $1 billion in annual tax revenue for European governments.
It's particularly lovely in this case because you need to record not just the customer's location and the tax rate there, but also some corroborating evidence that the customer is in fact in that location, then register with the appropriate authority in that location. The reporting burden is going to mean fewer small sites capable of doing their own checkout process.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Almost no small sites were doing there own checkout process, those that are can use VAT MOSS in the UK (I'm sure equivalents exist in other EU countries) to avoid registering with ANY new tax authorities. Did you ignore that because it doesn't gel with your hyperbolic or did you not even know about it?
Short of setting an EU VAT rate there's not much else the EU could do. Let one country undercut others on VAT and you'll get big players like Amazon/Tesco setting up firms with 'headquarters' there to pay the lowest rate.
All of this basically presupposes that taxes are a right of government. Let that sink in.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Actually VAT is 15-20% in the EU. We like it that way, it pays for stuff like our socialised healthcare and affordable/free education.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC