Last time I wrote that no marketplace rule reaches your own store: there is no platform in the middle, so the sale is your supply. Whether Germany taxes it is a separate question. Four orders leaving the same warehouse in one week can be a German sale, an Austrian sale, a sale with no VAT on it, and a sale Germany never sees. What decides it is in the order file: where the parcel left from, where it went, whether the buyer is a business, and who paid the import VAT.
Take one store. The brand is based in Manchester, sells on its own Magento or Adobe Commerce store, and keeps stock in a third-party warehouse near Leipzig. No office in the EU, no staff there, just the pallets. The four orders below cover most of what it ships into the EU in a week; exports have their own rules.
Leipzig to Dresden: which box, which month?
A consumer in Dresden orders a lamp, and the parcel leaves the Leipzig warehouse.
When goods are shipped, the sale is taxed where the shipment starts (§ 3 Abs. 6 Satz 1 of the German VAT Act, UStG). It started in Germany, so this is a German sale at the German rate: 19 percent for the lamp, 7 percent if it had been a book or a bag of coffee. It goes in your advance return (Umsatzsteuer-Voranmeldung, or UStVA), monthly or quarterly as the tax office sets it, net of VAT, in the box for the rate it carried.
The base is what the customer actually paid, shipping included, divided by 1.19, or 1.07 for the reduced-rate part of a mixed basket.
Then the month. The standard method taxes the sale when it is performed: the tax arises at the end of the return period in which the goods were handed to the carrier (§ 16 Abs. 1 Satz 1, § 13 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 Buchst. a UStG). Unless the customer paid first, which in an online checkout they almost always do. Then the tax arises in the month the payment came in, whichever method you are on (Satz 4 of the same provision), and a lamp paid for on 30 September and shipped on 2 October is September’s.
You do not have to invoice this consumer; the duty applies to business buyers and non-business legal entities such as a public body (§ 14 Abs. 2 UStG). You do have to record it, with the payment and the dispatch matched to the order.
Leipzig to Salzburg: which country’s VAT?
In my practice, most stores charge this customer 19 percent. The right rate is 20, and it is Austria’s.
You or your carrier moved the lamp from one member state to another, and the buyer has no VAT number to use: a consumer, or a business too small to need one. That is an intra-Community distance sale (innergemeinschaftlicher Fernverkauf), taxed where the goods are when the transport ends (§ 3c Abs. 1 UStG). The 10,000-euro threshold exists only for a seller established in exactly one member state (§ 3c Abs. 4 UStG), and this brand is established in none, so Austria taxes the first lamp.
You do not have to register in Austria for this. You can declare it through the One Stop Shop (§ 18j UStG), one quarterly return covering every EU country you sold into, if you registered before the quarter began or at the latest by the 10th of the month after your first such sale (Art. 57d of Implementing Regulation 282/2011). Miss both, and Austria wants its own registration. For a seller established outside the EU, the One Stop Shop runs in the country the goods ship from; ship from two and you pick one, for that year and the two after it.
The tax on the Salzburg sale goes in the One Stop Shop return, never in the German one. Its net amount still appears in the German return, in the box for turnover not taxable in Germany (Kz 45, line 51 of the form). The Dresden sale goes in the German return as taxable turnover and never in the One Stop Shop. The mirror image, which I see often, is a German domestic sale pushed into the One Stop Shop because the store’s tax engine treated “EU” as one thing.
Leipzig to Rotterdam, to a business: no VAT, on what conditions?
A Dutch retailer orders forty lamps for its own shop and gives you its VAT identification number at checkout.
This time the invoice is compulsory, by the 15th of the following month, showing your VAT number and theirs (§ 14a Abs. 3 UStG), and there is no tax on it. The sale is an intra-Community supply (innergemeinschaftliche Lieferung), exempt from German VAT (§ 4 Nr. 1 Buchst. b and § 6a UStG), and it appears in your German return in the box for exempt intra-Community supplies, in the period you issued the invoice (§ 18b UStG). It appears a second time in the EC Sales List (Zusammenfassende Meldung, or ZM), the separate report that tells the Dutch authorities to expect the purchase (§ 18a UStG), due by the 25th after the period: the quarter until your intra-Community supplies exceed 50,000 euros in one, then the month.
Two conditions are part of the exemption itself. The buyer’s VAT number has to be valid on the day, and the supply has to be reported correctly in the EC Sales List (§ 6a Abs. 1 Satz 1 Nr. 4 and § 4 Nr. 1 Buchst. b UStG). You also need proof the goods left Germany: a confirmation of arrival from the buyer (Gelangensbestätigung, no signature needed if it comes electronically from their own systems) or the carrier’s documents (§ 17a and § 17b UStDV), plus the buyer’s details, the goods, the date and the destination in your books (§ 17d UStDV).
A Munich retailer would pay 19 percent like anyone else: the B2B reverse charge covers services, installed goods and a short list such as scrap metal (§ 13b Abs. 2 UStG), and no lamp.
Manchester to Hamburg, direct: does Germany see it at all?
Now the store runs out of stock in Leipzig and ships a lamp to a Hamburg consumer straight from the UK.
The transport begins outside the EU, so the sale takes place outside Germany (§ 3 Abs. 6 Satz 1 UStG) and Germany taxes nothing on it. Import VAT is due at the border, and on a duties-unpaid parcel the carrier collects it from the customer.
That changes if you shipped it delivered-duty-paid. If the import VAT is owed by you or by someone acting for you (§ 3 Abs. 8 UStG), which for a UK seller means your carrier clearing it as your indirect representative, the place of supply moves to Germany. Now it is a German sale at 19 percent, in your return. The import VAT comes back as input VAT in the month customs accepted the declaration, provided the paperwork names you as the importer. The shipping term does not decide this; what decides is who owes the import VAT under customs law (UStAE 3.13). If the carrier cleared the parcel in its own name and on its own account and only billed you the tax, the carrier owes it, not you, and it is not yours to deduct. Agree the customs treatment with your carrier before the first parcel.
For consignments of 150 euros or less, there is a third route, the Import One Stop Shop, which a seller outside the EU can only use through an EU-based intermediary who becomes liable for the tax alongside it. That is its own article.
The two cases where the consumer sale is not yours
A merchant-of-record checkout. Say the Manchester brand adds a cross-border checkout service. Some of these do not process your sale. They buy the lamp from you and resell it, and the consumer’s contract is with them. Then the consumer sale is theirs to declare. You still have a sale, the lamp to that company. Where that sale is taxed depends on who sends the goods: if you dispatch them, the transport belongs to your supply and it takes place in Leipzig (§ 3 Abs. 6a Satz 2 and Abs. 6 UStG), so 19 percent to a German address and exempt on the Rotterdam conditions if it goes abroad. If the checkout service arranges the carriage itself, the transport can belong to its supply instead, and the answer turns on the contract. Read the terms: does the company sell the goods to the consumer in its own name, whether it buys them from you or takes them on commission (§ 3 Abs. 3 UStG)? If yes, your customer is that company.
A marketplace order you ship yourself. A lamp ordered on Amazon or Kaufland by a consumer and shipped by you from Leipzig is the platform’s sale. For a seller established outside the EU the platform is the deemed supplier, the law’s term for treating it as the seller (§ 3 Abs. 3a Satz 1 UStG). What you declare is a supply of the lamp to the platform, exempt under § 4 Nr. 4c UStG, in the German return’s box 43 (Kz 43), exempt supplies with input VAT recovery. Marketplace orders from business buyers sit outside that rule and stay yours in full. A lamp ordered on your own store and shipped by Amazon’s multi-channel fulfilment from German stock is yours at 19 percent, like the Dresden order, because the buyer did not reach you through the platform’s interface (Art. 5b of Implementing Regulation 282/2011). From Polish or Czech stock it is a distance sale into Germany instead.
Where each order lands
Six orders, one warehouse, one company:
- Dresden, consumer: German return, 19 or 7 percent, in the month the customer paid, or the month you shipped if that came first.
- Salzburg, consumer: tax in the One Stop Shop return at the Austrian rate, the net amount in the German return’s box for turnover not taxable in Germany.
- Rotterdam, business: German return as an exempt intra-Community supply in the month of the invoice, plus the EC Sales List.
- Hamburg, direct from the UK: nothing in Germany if the customer paid the import VAT, a German sale at 19 percent if you did.
- Merchant-of-record order: the consumer sale is theirs. Your sale to them is German while you dispatch from Leipzig to a German address; if they arrange the carriage, check the contract.
- Marketplace consumer order, shipped by you: an exempt supply to the platform in the German return. The consumer sale is the platform’s.
What to check this week
- Sort one month of orders by hand into the six rows above, by the earlier of payment and dispatch date, business orders by invoice date. Any order the store’s own tax report put in a different row is misfiled.
- Check what rate the checkout gave an Austrian, a French and a Dutch consumer. If all three say 19 percent, the store is treating the EU as Germany.
- Find out whether the checkout validates VAT numbers against VIES, the EU’s validation service. A number that was never checked leaves you with an exemption you cannot prove, or a business charged consumer VAT.
- Read the shipping terms on your direct-from-abroad orders. DDP, where you pay the import VAT, is only the intention. What decides is who customs recorded as the debtor: you, through your carrier, and the sale is German; the customer, and it is not.
- Search your checkout provider’s terms for “merchant of record”, and check who arranges the carriage. If you find it, the consumer sales are not yours to declare. What you declare is a business sale to that company, taxed where the transport starts if you are the one sending.
Most store tax engines were set up once, at launch, for the founder’s own country. Then the business added a warehouse, a country, a wholesale customer and a checkout plug-in, and nobody went back. In the cases I see it shows about a year later, as a letter asking why the German return, the One Stop Shop return and the store’s own accounts tell three different stories.
Bonus Tip From M2E Team: Make Multichannel Order Management Easier
As this guide shows, where an order comes from can matter. A sale through your own store and a consumer order through a marketplace may need to be treated differently.
M2E Pro helps Adobe Commerce and Magento sellers manage the operational side of those marketplace sales. You can connect channels such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart, synchronize product and inventory data, and manage marketplace orders through your Magento environment.
With fewer disconnected processes, it becomes easier to keep your multichannel sales data organized and trace orders back to the right channel.
