EU VAT online sales: which rate, whose country
One rule decides almost every case: consumer sales are taxed where the customer is, not where you are. Business sales usually skip VAT entirely, if you can prove it.
Selling to one country means learning one VAT rate. Selling across the EU raises the same question 27 times, and the answer splits on two facts: is the buyer a private customer or a VAT-registered business, and — for a business — are they in your country or a different one. Get that fork right and the rest is mostly lookup. (Reverse charge and VIES get one-line versions in the glossary.) This page is not tax advice — confirm your specific situation with an accountant, especially near a threshold or for a reduced-rate category.
Selling to a private customer: charge their country's rate
For a sale to a consumer anywhere in the EU — since 2015 for digital services, since 2021 for goods — the destination principle applies: you charge VAT at the rate of the country your customer is in, not your own. A French customer buying from a German seller pays French VAT, at the French rate, even though the seller never leaves Germany.
One meaningful exception: if you're established in a single EU country and your combined cross-border sales to consumers in other member states stay under €10,000 a year — one total across all of them — you may keep charging your own country's rate. Cross the threshold, or simply choose not to rely on the exemption, and you charge each buyer's country's rate from then on.
Registering for VAT in every country you sell into would make that unworkable, which is what the One-Stop Shop exists for: register once, file a single return, and your own tax office distributes what you owe. OSS changes the paperwork, not the rate — the OSS guide covers who needs it and what registering involves.
Selling to another business: reverse charge, if you can prove it
Which rate, for this specific order
This walkthrough is for goods and digital services specifically — the two categories that actually follow the destination rule below. An ordinary, non-digital service (consulting, a one-off repair job) usually follows a different, older rule that taxes it where you as the seller are based; see the FAQ below if that's your situation.
Is the customer in the EU at all?
If not — the UK, Switzerland, the US, anywhere outside the 27 — none of the above applies. That destination's own tax rules take over, and they're a separate question entirely.
Consumer, or a VAT-registered business?
A private individual is a consumer sale (Section 2's rule) regardless of country. A business only gets B2B treatment if it actually provides a VAT number — no number offered generally means treating the sale as B2C by default.
For a business buyer: same country, or different?
A VAT-registered business in your own country is a normal domestic sale — charge your own standard rate as usual. A VAT-registered business in a different EU country is where reverse charge applies, once you've verified the number.
For a consumer buyer: check the €10,000 combined threshold
Under it (and you're established in only one EU country), you may charge your own rate. At or over it, charge the buyer's country's standard rate, and consider whether OSS registration is worth setting up rather than registering country by country.
Not if you use the One-Stop Shop — that's specifically what it exists to avoid. Without it, yes, crossing the threshold into a country's market in meaningful volume can mean registering there directly, which is exactly the administrative burden OSS was built to remove.
This is exactly why verifying through the EU's own VIES service matters rather than taking a number at face value — a validated check is your evidence of having done proper diligence. Rules and outcomes vary by circumstance, so this is a genuine "ask an accountant" case rather than one with one universal answer.
For digital and downloadable services sold to consumers, yes — that's actually where the destination rule started, in 2015, six years before it extended to goods. The reverse-charge side (Section 3) applies broadly to B2B services too. Ordinary, non-digital services sold to consumers are a different, older rule: they're generally taxed where you as the seller are based, not where the customer is, with a handful of specifically listed exceptions. "Services" isn't one universal answer here — which category a given service falls into is what decides it.
Rarely, but not never — a country adjusting its standard rate happens every few years somewhere in the EU, which is the entire reason this page is dated and reviewed annually rather than treated as permanently correct.
Where this shows up in Olmira
Olmira ships the current standard VAT rate for all 27 member states, and checkout applies the destination rule for you: an order going to an EU delivery address is taxed at that country's standard rate out of the box, not from a table you maintain. Three limits are worth knowing before you rely on it.
Standard rates only A product that qualifies for a reduced rate won't get it, and a reduced rate you configure yourself won't override the standard rate on an EU sale — your own tax classes and rates apply to destinations outside the EU.
No threshold tracking Every EU sale is charged at the buyer's country rate whether or not you've crossed the €10,000 line. If you're under it and intend to keep charging your domestic rate, that's a conversation with your accountant before relying on what checkout does.
Reverse charge stays your call A VAT-number validator checks a buyer's number against the EU's live VIES service, but checkout never asks a buyer for that number — deciding a B2B sale qualifies, zero-rating it and adding the reverse-charge note happens on the invoice, by you. See how selling works on the online store.