Announcing changes for some of my European customers. After much research and discussion, the bottom line is that my automation of PDF delivery puts me in the position of having to charge VAT. There was an exception for manually fulfilled digital goods- the price of progress. There is no threshold, unlike Australia where I would have to charge 10% GST if I sold more than $75000 AUD annually (I wish!). If you have been purchasing my PDFs through Etsy, they've already been taking care of it. As I continue to do more PDF business, I needed to get compliant.
It's complicated because every country has a different rate. It's expensive - sorry, Hungary with your 27%. Here are the current countries and rates that apply.
Fortunately, the EU has a system called MOSS that allows me to collect and submit a single report rather than 27 separate quarterly filings. This posting serves to inform you of this requirement and my official MOSS VAT ID (EU372012084) that authorizes collection of these taxes.
Setting up the shopping cart to collect it correctly has been a challenge - I'm currently stumped at how to NOT charge VAT for customers who order the printed chart where a PDF was available. For now, if you are incorrectly charged VAT on shipped orders, I will happily and quickly refund that.