The Implementing Regulation No 815/2012 defining the VAT reporting rules for the mini one stop shop scheme (“MOSS”) for B2C telecommunication, broadcasting and eservices in the EU has been made officially available.
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One of the relatively common questions we receive from our ebiz clients these days is very logical: What are eservices? Let’s start with the terminology and follow it up with examples.
There are many different expressions for this kind of services: electronic services, electronically supplied services, digital services, digital products… We will call them eservices – if the European Commission can live with this, so can we. And it is such a nice, short, effective word. Find out more
In Hungary, under the Act on Telecommunications Tax, telecom companies are subject to a new tax calculated on the basis of phone calls initiated and messages (SMS, MMS) sent by their subscribers. The new act took effect on 1 July 2012. The tax is payable by the service providers and the tax base is calculated on the basis of the total time of calls initiated and the number of messages sent from the call number of the subscriber, or, in the absence of a subscription, the call number registered at the service provider. The tax rates are HUF 2 per minute started for initiated phone calls and HUF 2 per message sent.
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PwC surveyed 7,005 consumers worldwide, including 1,000 respondents from Switzerland. The single biggest conclusion that we drew from our study is that consumers are outpacing traditional retailers and online pure-players are closing the gap. Consumers choose the channel that best suits their needs, doing their research predominantly online for products before buying the product in a store. Besides company websites, more and more consumers are researching and following brands via social media.
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The following article with the title “EU Takes on VAT Treatment of E-Book Sales” has been written by David D. Stewart, a legal reporter of Tax Notes International, and publishes in Tax Notes International on 16 July 2012, page 199.
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As reported previously here, here, and here, France and Luxembourg have unilaterally decided to tax e-books at a (super)reduced VAT rate. They decided to tax them as “normal” books instead as e-services as they should be treated by the letter of the EU VAT Directive. This gave e-book traders established in France and Luxembourg a considerable advantage when selling e-books to their EU customers compared to e-book traders in other EU countries as it made the e-books in France and Luxembourg approx. 12% cheaper than before (reduction to a 3% super-reduced VAT rate instead of the standard rate of 15% in Luxembourg and to 7% instead of 19.6% in France).
In the next couple of posts I will go through the various main items of the EU Voucher Directive proposal. Let’s start with the single purpose voucher which seem to be major pain for some of the biggest players in the voucher industry.
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May seems to be a very busy month for everyone dealing with vouchers.
First the ECJ’s judgement in the case C-520/10 Lebera has been published on 3 May 2012, which was shortly followed by the text of the proposal for the new Voucher Directive changes to the UK voucher rules, effective as of 10 May 2012. Quite a busy week for a subject discussed for years without any major breakthrough.
Luxembourg is currently probably the nicest place to establish an e-business sales entity in the EU (“e-hub”) and this will probably not change before y2015. This is due to several reasons: Find out more
Here is the big announcement – I have managed to snatch the last speaker spot at the Internet World 2012 taking place in London next week (24 – 26 April 2012). I will be speaking at the free for all seminar on Thursday, 26 April 2012, as part of the Digital Solutions Theater. The workshop starts at 3 PM London time and should last 20 min. This is perfect – I will be speaking about “VAT and Monetisation” after all and my guess is that if I speak a minute longer everybody will be running out of the hall (through fire exits or jumping out of the windows if necessary).
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