An official post on Amazon's global store opening official account recently“The uploading of German tax certificate has been extended”It has been popular throughout the circle of friends of cross-border e-commerce service providers and sellers, and Ambo has also received many inquiries from friends of sellers and peers.

Before we discuss this question, we would like to briefly introduce what VAT is：

First, VAT is a consumption tax levied on buyers of transactions within the EU, meaning that the tax liability falls on the consumer, not the seller。

Why does the seller need to register VAT tax number? It is mainly to collect tax from consumers in place of tax bureau in Europe, and pay the collected tax back to tax bureau regularly. Therefore, consumers are the real undertaker of VAT, so VAT is also an indirect tax。

Some sellers, friends and peers tend to understand VAT as sales VAT in qualitative thinking. However, for our non-EU cross-border sellers, there is also an import VAT closely related to them. We can simply understand that sales of VAT is Output VAT and import VAT is input tax（Input VAT）。

Whether our seller needs to conduct VAT compliance in the European Union, we need to consider not only whether we have the obligation to pay the Output VAT, but also whether we need to properly handle the Import VAT。

OK, now we return to the topic, whether domestic spontaneous goods need to register with VAT in Germany？

Let's take a look at an article from the German Internal Revenue Service website

The article emphasizes that：

For inventory in the countryCross-border sellers outside the EU，In the latest official documents of the German Internal Revenue Service, there are three cases where non-EU cross-border sellers are required to comply with VAT operations：

1.     Sellers of goods from German warehouses to German customers and German companies。

2.     From the rest of the EU（Not Germany）The warehouse is sold to buyers in Germany, as well as other EU countries（Not Germany）That adds up to a seller with a natural year of less than €100,000.（In other words, once a natural year of remote sales exceeds the threshold of 100,000 euros for remote sales, the following natural year will be subject to VAT compliance payment in Germany.）

3.     From a third country（Outside the European Union）Warehouse sellers to German buyers or German partners，If the seller or its forwarder acts as the importer to clear customs and pay taxes.It is also necessary to register VAT in Germany to pay Import VAT.

So here's the problem：

Is it necessary for the German seller to register with the German VAT?Amazon sent an email to the seller asking for VAT number documents, is it unnecessary?Does the post post post article have calculate not to go back on its word?

AmberAnswer:Whether the seller of spontaneous goods in China needs to register VAT number to pay VAT depends on who is the customs clearance importer（Importer）the：

1. If the seller or its forwarder acts as Importer，Then the seller needs to register VAT number for customs clearance and pay Import VAT in Germany，Once the seller acts as the importer（importer），In this case, we need to declare sales VAT for the order of this spontaneous goods every month, and the Import VAT paid previously can be rebated or deducted.

2. If the buyer or his German partner acts as the Importer, the seller does not need to register VAT to pay VAT tax in Germany. Import customs clearance and payment of Import VAT are borne by the buyer.