Amazon FBA in other countries (Pan-EU): which VAT registrations you need

Selling to a German customer from your warehouse in Spain is a distance sale: it can go through the One-Stop Shop (OSS). But as soon as your goods are stored in Germany, even if they're still yours, two things happen:

1. Shipping the stock is already a transaction for VAT. Article 9.3 of the Spanish VAT Law calls it a transfer of goods: it is treated as if you sold the goods to yourself in the other country.
2. Sales from that warehouse to customers in that country are domestic sales of that country, with its VAT and its return.

With Amazon's Pan-EU programme this multiplies, because Amazon spreads your stock across warehouses in several countries according to demand.

• Registration in the ROI (register of intra-EU operators) with form 036, so your Spanish VAT number is valid across the EU.
• Record each transfer in the record book of certain intra-EU transactions.
• Declare it in form 349 with key E, giving your own VAT number in the destination country as the recipient. Without that number, the exemption doesn't hold.
• Intrastat: a monthly statistical declaration of goods movements within the EU. Today you must file it if your dispatches exceed €400,000 a year, by the 12th of the following month. There is a draft order to raise the threshold to €800,000, but it is not yet in force.
• If you are in the SII, the transfer is also sent within 4 days of the start of the shipment.

• A local VAT number. It's not optional: according to the European Commission, being identified for VAT in the destination country is a condition for the transfer to be exempt.
• Declare there the intra-EU acquisition of your own stock.
• Declare there your sales to customers in that country, at its VAT rate (19% in Germany or 22% in Italy, against 21% in Spain, at the standard rate). Those sales don't go in the OSS.
• Sales from that warehouse to customers in a third EU country are distance sales and can go through the OSS, with no €10,000 threshold.

Besides VAT, each country has its own obligations, such as extended producer responsibility (EPR) registrations for packaging, and its own deadlines and language.

The law has an exception, call-off stock (article 9 bis of the Spanish VAT Law), where you don't need to register at destination. But it requires that, when the shipment leaves, there is already a specific buyer, identified for VAT in that country, who will buy those goods within twelve months.

With Amazon FBA you sell to consumers you don't yet know, so this exception doesn't fit. The European Commission says so in general terms: it doesn't cover goods sent without yet knowing the buyer.

The typical mistake is to switch on the marketplace, send stock and deal with registrations when the first tax letter arrives. The order that avoids problems is the reverse:

1. Decide in which countries you will hold stock, not just where you will sell. With Pan-EU you don't decide box by box: Amazon decides, within the countries you activate.
2. Register for VAT in each of them and sort out their other obligations (EPR, a representative if needed, who files your returns there).
3. Get your accounts ready for transfers: form 349, the record book and Intrastat if you reach the threshold.
4. Then, send the first shipment.