EU Marketplace Deemed Supplier VAT: 2027 and 2028

Many platforms describe this internally as becoming a deemed reseller. The term used in EU VAT law is deemed supplier, and it is not a proposal. Article 14a of the VAT Directive has applied since 1 July 2021, introduced by the VAT e-commerce package in Council Directive (EU) 2017/2455 of 5 December 2017 and Council Directive (EU) 2019/1995 of 21 November 2019. The same package removed the old low-value import VAT exemption, so commercial parcels are no longer VAT free simply because they are cheap.

Where the rule bites, the electronic interface is treated, for VAT purposes only, as if it had bought the goods from the underlying seller and sold them to the customer. It is a legal fiction. The marketplace usually never possesses the goods, and legal ownership still passes directly from the seller to the buyer. That is precisely why making a platform responsible for the customer VAT does not move the seller's other tax, customs and inventory obligations across with it.

The distinction matters commercially as much as legally. It is the reason a Chinese, British or American seller can hold German, French, Polish, Italian and Spanish VAT numbers while Amazon or eBay still collects the consumer VAT on the covered marketplace orders. We set out the two sides of that relationship for marketplaces and platforms and for ecommerce sellers.

Article 14a has two limbs. The first covers distance sales of goods imported from outside the EU in consignments of an intrinsic value not exceeding EUR 150, whoever the underlying seller is. The second covers goods that are already inside the EU when they are sold through the interface by a taxable person not established in the Community, at any value.

Read the second limb carefully, because this is where most misunderstandings start. The test is whether the underlying seller is established in the EU, not whether it holds EU VAT numbers. A seller with five European VAT registrations and no EU establishment is still a non-established seller for Article 14a.

Status must then be settled transaction by transaction. The same interface can be the deemed supplier for one order and not for the next: deemed supplier for a non-EU seller's German stock, but not for an imported consignment worth EUR 400, and not for an identical item sold by an EU-established merchant.

Where Article 14a applies, a single commercial sale is split into two supplies for VAT. There is a supply from the underlying seller to the electronic interface, and a supply from the interface to the final customer. Article 36b ascribes the transport to the second, customer-facing supply, which is what makes the platform's supply the distance sale. Under Article 66a, both supplies become chargeable when the payment is accepted rather than on dispatch.

For EU-held goods under Article 14a(2), Article 136a exempts the seller-to-platform leg, and the seller keeps its right to deduct input VAT on the related costs. That is an exemption with credit, not a loss of deduction. In practice the first leg is usually documented by self-billing, which is why marketplace tax reports look nothing like an ordinary commission statement.

The platform then reports the customer-facing VAT through the appropriate scheme: IOSS for qualifying imported consignments, and the Union OSS for intra-EU distance sales and for domestic deemed supplies. Our OSS registration and returns service covers how that reporting sits beside a seller's own local returns.

Sellers see the consequences in their payout files. VAT collected by the platform appears as platform VAT, while the seller's own leg shows as an exempt supply. Those amounts belong in different boxes of different returns, so they should be separated before, not after, a VAT return is prepared.

The central consequence for a non-EU seller is that output VAT on the customer sale and the seller's own VAT registration stop being the same question. The platform can take responsibility for the VAT on a covered order while the seller remains registered because of inventory, imports, intra-EU stock transfers and sales made outside the marketplace.

The rule only reaches transactions the interface actually facilitates. A business selling on Amazon and through its own Shopify store is in both worlds at once: the platform is the supplier for the marketplace orders, and the business is still the supplier for its own website sales, using the Union OSS or local registrations as appropriate.

One error is expensive and common. Where a marketplace is the deemed supplier on a low-value import, the seller must not also charge the customer VAT or use its own IOSS number for that consignment. Doing so produces VAT twice on the same goods and a refund claim that is slow at best.

This is the question clients ask most: if Amazon collects my VAT, why am I paying for VAT registrations in Germany, France, Poland, Italy and Spain? The answer is that the marketplace replaces the seller only for the sales it facilitates. It does not take over the seller's VAT identity for the life of the inventory.

Importation and the cross-border transfer of a business's own goods are separate taxable events that can happen before any customer buys anything. Passive storage after the goods arrive is not another taxable event in its own right, although local reporting, deduction and administrative requirements may still make the existing registration necessary. Under Article 17(1) of the VAT Directive, a transfer of own goods to another Member State is treated as a supply in the country of departure, while Article 21 treats the arrival as an intra-Community acquisition. That acquisition is what triggers identification in the destination country under Article 214.

Take a Chinese company using pan-European fulfilment. Stock arrives in Germany and some of it is later moved to Poland. When a Polish consumer buys a unit through the marketplace, the platform charges Polish VAT on that sale. That does not undo the earlier Germany to Poland movement, which was the seller's own transaction. Both statements are true at the same time, and they answer different questions.

We answer that question in full in if Amazon collects VAT, do you need VAT registration?, which works through the exact triggers country by country, the importer of record question and what to review before July 2028.

For a platform, deemed supplier status is far more than adding a percentage at checkout. It has to decide, per transaction, whether Article 14a applies, determine the destination and the rate, collect the VAT, report it through the right scheme and correct it when the order changes. That requires a decision engine fed with the seller's establishment, the location of the goods, the customer's country and status, the consignment value, the product classification and the returns data.

The law offers a limited shield. Under Article 5c of Implementing Regulation 282/2011, a deemed supplier is not liable for VAT beyond what it declared and paid where it depended on information provided by the seller or a third party, that information was wrong, and it can demonstrate that it did not and could not reasonably have known. The protection covers bad seller data, not the platform's own arithmetic. Article 5d lets the interface treat the person selling as a taxable person and the buyer as a non-taxable person unless it has information to the contrary.

That is why seller onboarding has become a tax control rather than a commercial formality. Establishment evidence, warehouse locations and product data determine whether the platform itself owes the VAT, so collecting them diligently is what makes the Article 5c defence available at all.

Record keeping is the other half. Article 242a requires an interface facilitating supplies to keep records detailed enough for the Member States concerned to verify that VAT was accounted for correctly, available electronically on request and kept for 10 years from the end of the year of the transaction. Where several interfaces are involved, the one where the order is placed and the sale concluded is normally the deemed supplier.

A separate reform now runs alongside the VAT rule. Since 1 July 2026 the EUR 150 customs duty relief no longer exists and a temporary flat duty of EUR 3 applies per item category identified by tariff subheading, not per physical unit. The customs reform politically agreed on 26 March 2026 would make large marketplaces deemed importers once the final legislation applies. The VAT threshold did not move: EUR 150 still defines the IOSS and Article 14a(1) scope.

Keep the two labels apart. Deemed supplier is a VAT concept under Article 14a. Deemed importer is a customs concept, and a platform can hold both roles for the same parcel. The duty, its VAT treatment and the announced Union handling fee are covered in the EU customs duty on low-value parcels.

The VAT in the Digital Age package was adopted on 11 March 2025, published in the Official Journal on 25 March 2025 and entered into force on 14 April 2025. It applies in stages, which is why so much commentary contradicts itself. The Commission published revised e-commerce explanatory notes and OSS guidelines on 24 July 2026 for the 2027 changes, followed by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1869 on 28 July 2026 for the special schemes.

From 1 January 2027, Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 replaces Article 14a. The condition that the underlying seller is not established in the Community stays exactly where it is. What widens is the customer side: alongside ordinary consumers, the rule will cover a taxable person or a non-taxable legal person whose intra-Community acquisitions are not subject to VAT under Article 3(1). That is the group of exempt and partly exempt buyers, flat-rate farmers and small public bodies below the acquisition threshold. It is not a rule making platforms the deemed supplier for every ordinary B2B sale, and it does not extend to EU-established sellers. The Commission must report on how the rule is working by 1 July 2027 and may propose extending it.

From 1 July 2028 comes the change that matters most to multi-country sellers. A new special scheme for transfers of own goods makes the intra-Community acquisition in the destination Member State exempt and, notwithstanding Article 214(1), expressly does not create a registration obligation there. A mandatory reverse charge in the amended Article 194 shifts the VAT to the customer where a supplier is neither established nor VAT identified in the country and the customer already is. Together these are the Single VAT Registration pillar, and the conditions attached to them are set out in our guide to the ViDA timeline.

One further 2028 item is regularly mixed into this story and should not be. ViDA also creates a deemed supplier rule for platforms facilitating short-term accommodation rental of up to 30 nights and road passenger transport, where the underlying provider does not charge VAT. It applies from 1 July 2028 and Member States may defer it to 1 January 2030. That is a services regime for travel and mobility platforms, not a new start date for the goods rule that has run since 2021.

The useful analysis is at transaction-flow level, not at company level. Asking who remits the final VAT answers only one part of it. The questions that decide the whole picture are where the goods entered the EU, where they physically sit, whether they move before sale, who facilitated the order, whether the seller is genuinely EU established, and which sales bypass the platform entirely.

For accountants, agencies and fulfilment providers, this is also where the advisory value moves. Through 30 June 2028 the work is largely getting stock-country registrations right. After that it becomes deciding which registrations are still legally necessary once the transfer-of-own-goods scheme, the wider OSS and the mandatory reverse charge are applied, and which can be closed. We work with partners and referral firms on exactly that, and our partner programme sets out how the relationship works.

If you want a scoped answer rather than a general one, the fastest route is to send us the flows. Contact our VAT team with the list below and we will tell you which transactions belong to the platform, which stay with the seller, and which registrations are actually required today.