The EU One-Stop Shop (OSS): when it helps and when it doesn't

Since 1 July 2021, when a business established in Spain sells to a private customer in another EU country and the VAT due is that country's VAT, it doesn't need to register in each country: it can declare everything from Spain through the Union scheme of the One-Stop Shop.

It is voluntary. The alternative is to register for VAT in each country where you sell and file their returns there.

As long as your distance sales to private customers in other EU countries, plus certain electronic services, don't exceed €10,000 a year (excluding VAT), you can keep charging Spanish VAT.

• The limit is for the whole EU combined, not per country.
• It covers the current and the previous year: if you exceeded it last year, this year you charge destination VAT from the first sale.
• If you go over it during the year, you charge the customer's country's VAT from the sale that crosses it.
• You can choose to charge destination VAT before reaching the threshold, and that choice lasts at least two years.

Careful: the threshold only exists if all shipments leave from Spain. If part of your goods ship from a warehouse in another country, there is no threshold: destination VAT applies from the first euro.

You register for the Union scheme with form 035, online:

• As a rule, it applies from the first day of the following quarter.
• If you have already made sales that should go through the OSS, you can apply it from the first of them as long as you file form 035 by the 10th of the month after that sale.

If you miss that deadline, those sales can't go through the One-Stop Shop: you have to register and pay the VAT in each country of consumption.

• One return per calendar quarter, filed and paid during the month after the end of the quarter.
• It is mandatory even if you sold nothing abroad that quarter.
• Errors are corrected in a later form 369, within three years of the original return's deadline.
• Surcharges, interest and penalties are not set by the OSS but by each country of consumption.
• You must keep the detail of the sales (country, date, amount, VAT and the evidence of where the customer is) for ten years.

In your Spanish form 303, these sales appear as not subject to Spanish VAT, in their own boxes.

This is where most problems are, because many people think that with the OSS everything is done:

• Sales to businesses (B2B): the OSS is only for sales to private customers. A business in another country is invoiced as an intra-EU supply.
• Local sales from a warehouse in another country: if you have stock in Germany and sell to a German customer from that warehouse, it's a domestic German sale and goes in the German VAT return. That's what happens with Amazon FBA and Pan-EU; I explain it in the guide to Amazon FBA in other countries.
• Transfers of your own stock between countries: they aren't in the OSS today. Under the EU's ViDA reform they are expected to come in from 1 July 2028.
• VAT you pay in other countries: it isn't recovered in form 369. If you aren't registered there, you claim it through the refund procedure for non-established businesses.
• Your Spanish form 303: the OSS doesn't replace it. You keep filing it.

No, if your business is established in Spain. The rule that turns the marketplace into a deemed supplier that settles the VAT (article 8 bis of the Spanish VAT Law) applies to sellers not established in the EU. The AEAT says so itself: if the seller is established in the EU, the platform isn't liable for its sales to EU customers.

For you, Amazon is a sales channel, not the one filing your VAT.