The €10 000 distance-selling threshold and OSS
Since 2021-07-01 the old per-country distance-selling thresholds are gone. A single EU-wide €10 000 annual threshold covers B2C cross-border goods and digital services combined; below it, you charge home-country (Estonian) VAT; above it, the place of supply shifts to the buyer’s country. OSS lets a single Estonian registration cover all other 26 EU states through one quarterly declaration to EMTA.
Practical rules per EMTA’s special-schemes page: register for OSS in Estonia before the first cross-border sale that takes you over €10 000; file quarterly by the end of the month following the quarter; pay in euro; keep records for 10 years. If you cross the threshold mid-quarter, the OSS rate applies from the sale that crossed it, not from the next quarter.
IOSS, the €150 rule, and imports
IOSS applies to B2C imports of goods whose intrinsic value (excluding shipping and insurance) does not exceed €150. With IOSS, VAT is charged at checkout at the destination-country rate and remitted monthly via a single EU portal; without it, the customer pays VAT and a broker fee at import — a conversion-killer. IOSS registration is done in one EU state (Estonia is fine for OÜs) via EMTA.
Above €150 the regular import-VAT regime applies: VAT and any duty are settled at customs by the importer of record. Marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, AliExpress) running the “deemed supplier” rule may collect IOSS VAT themselves on your behalf — confirm in Seller Central whether Amazon is taking that role for your SKUs before you register redundantly.
Amazon Pan-EU FBA — the multi-registration trap
Pan-EU FBA distributes your stock across Amazon fulfilment centres in up to 7 EU countries (DE, FR, IT, ES, PL, CZ, NL and rotating). Every country where Amazon stores your goods creates a VAT-registration obligation locally, independent of OSS — because OSS only covers B2C cross-border supplies, not local-to-local supplies from foreign stock. FBA Baltic-only (EE/LT/PL, for example) is materially cheaper than full Pan-EU once you count 5–7 foreign VAT filings.
Q: Do I need OSS registration for my Estonian Amazon FBA store? A: Yes — OSS handles all cross-border B2C shipments from your stock, including Amazon-fulfilled orders. But OSS does NOT replace the local VAT registrations that Pan-EU FBA triggers in each fulfilment-centre country; you end up running OSS plus those national VAT numbers in parallel. We model the break-even for Baltic-only vs. Pan-EU FBA before onboarding.
Q: How do I declare VAT on Amazon returns from an Estonian OÜ? A: Returns that reverse a cross-border B2C sale are corrected in the OSS return of the quarter they occur (EMTA form), reducing output VAT for that destination country; returns on locally-fulfilled supplies (Pan-EU FBA) are corrected in the relevant national VAT return. Amazon’s VAT Transactions Report is the source of truth; we reconcile it to Merit/Xero monthly.