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EUROPE
ON PROTOCOL.

Europe on the GRAJ protocol. One fee. 195 countries. Join the protocol.

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Region guide

SELLING INTO
EUROPE.

Live now

Europe gives a different answer from the United States to the question that matters most in wholesale: is a business-to-business sale taxable? Across a border to a VAT-registered buyer it is zero-rated under the reverse charge — and charging nothing is only a quarter of what that requires.

Countries covered
28
27 member states plus the UK
Union-wide threshold
€10,000
all member states combined, per year
Standard rate range
17–27%
Luxembourg lowest, Hungary highest

The reverse charge is not an exemption

A cross-border B2B supply to a VAT-registered EU buyer is zero-rated, and the buyer accounts for the VAT on their own return. The tax has not gone away; it has moved. You must hold the buyer's VAT number, validate it, show it on the invoice with an explicit reverse-charge statement, and report the sale on an EC Sales List.

  • Zero-rate against an invalid number and YOU are liable for the VAT
  • "The buyer gave it to me" is not a defence — validate against VIES and keep the result
  • A buyer without a valid number is treated as a consumer and is charged

One threshold for the whole union

€10,000 of cross-border consumer sales across ALL member states combined, per calendar year. Not per country. That single number is why sellers cross it without noticing — no individual country's sales ever look large enough to matter.

  • Below it, charge your own domestic rate
  • Above it, every consumer sale switches to the destination country's rate that day
  • One Stop Shop replaces 26 registrations with one quarterly return

The UK is a third country

Since Brexit the United Kingdom is outside the EU VAT area. No OSS, no EC Sales List, its own registration with HMRC and its own threshold. Goods moving between the EU and the UK are imports and exports rather than intra-community supplies. Sellers think of it as Europe; the rules do not.

What the protocol does here

GRAJ computes VAT for all 27 member states plus the UK, picks the right treatment — domestic, reverse charge, destination, origin or export — records why, and tracks the union-wide threshold as a running total so you see it approaching rather than after you crossed it.

Where to go next
/countries/dashboard/brand/sales-tax/learn/glossary
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