***DISCLAIMER***
The team at Link My Books are happy to provide users with technical assistance in applying tax rules to their Link My Books setup. We are not Tax Advisors and so our advice and suggestions on the application of tax rules cannot be construed as tax advice. We highly recommend that users seek advice from qualified accountants for their tax compliance.
On all European region Amazon seller accounts you can find a Threshold Monitor:
This page is designed to give you a visual overview of all EU countries where you may need to register for VAT.
Why would I need to register for VAT in another EU country?
VAT is complicated and dealing with VAT in multiple countries is even worse so always speak with your accountant or tax advisor before making any decisions about VAT.
The following non-exhaustive list of transactions may trigger a VAT registration obligation in EU countries:
You store goods in that country for sale to customers
You make distance sales of goods to customers in that country, delivered from another EU country, and the value of these sales exceed the threshold in the current or prior year.
How can I tell which countries Amazon is storing my inventory in?
Great question! Technically speaking you should be able to check in Amazon Seller Central on the Settings > Fulfilment by amazon page:
As you can see in the above screenshot, it's the "Allow inventory to be stored in other countries" section we're interested in here.
In Link My Books on the Threshold Monitoring page we have added a column for each EU country to show if you have actively stored inventory there during the current calendar year, as shown in the below screenshot:
We use the Month End Inventory Values reports from Amazon (for each month of the current calendar year) to show which countries you have stored sellable inventory in. We exclude inventory which is not in a sellable condition.
Note that we also exclude the UK from this table as the idea is to show potential VAT registration requirements for countries in the EU, not the UK.
IMPORTANT: Some users may see that this page indicates that they are storing inventory in Slovakia even though they have not given Amazon permission to do so.
Amazon has a returns depot in Slovakia and this inventory may only be passing through Slovakia rather than being "available for sale to customers". We recommend checking with Amazon directly if this affects you.
How can I monitor my distance sales to other EU countries?
Also on the Threshold Monitoring page we have a column called "Threshold Monitor" which shows your total sales for the current calendar year to each country in the EU in a progress bar style format. See the below screenshot:
The first value is the total sales during the current calendar year to that country.
The second value is the distance sales threshold for that country.
Link My Books uses sales data from the Amazon VAT Transaction Reports to calculate the total value of sales delivered to each country on a calendar year basis. The VAT reports are available from the 5th of each month so the information on this page is updated then too. Eg. on the 5th September the August data is available and included in the figures.
IMPORTANT: Please note that since some users may not have a full calendar years worth of VAT reports available from Amazon, the figures shown should only be used as a rough guide.
Speak with your accountant or tax advisor for advice on VAT registrations.
If you have any questions about this article or feedback on how we could make it better please reach out to the support team via the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the page or via email to [email protected].