> - If an EU country is owed tax by people resident within its borders, then perhaps the country's tax authorities should arrange for it to be collected, rather than relying on some foreign entity (e.g. Chinese company) to collect it.
As far as my experience goes, that is the case when seller is outside of EU. Buyer needs to pay customs the taxes on the item. In Finland it's common that when package outside of EU arrives in Finland, customs will hold and send buyer a message to declare item and pay taxes on it, especially if the value was declared on it (though they won't tell you what value was declared on it which can get tricky with things such as mixed electronic & physical goods on Kickstarter). It has it's own share of problems, like that buyer needs to figure out the TARIC code of the item (which are extremely specific, like "Waterproof footwear with outer soles and uppers of rubber or of plastics, the uppers of which are neither fixed to the sole nor assembled by stitching, riveting, nailing, screwing, plugging or similar processes - Other footwear - Covering the ankle but not covering the knee - With uppers of plastics").
Within EU it used to be that seller collected local VAT if their sales didn't exceed certain threshold to the buyer's country (100k IIRC). There has been some talks about modifying it so that seller would always need to collect buyer country's VAT, but I don't remember what is the current state of it is.
As far as my experience goes, that is the case when seller is outside of EU. Buyer needs to pay customs the taxes on the item. In Finland it's common that when package outside of EU arrives in Finland, customs will hold and send buyer a message to declare item and pay taxes on it, especially if the value was declared on it (though they won't tell you what value was declared on it which can get tricky with things such as mixed electronic & physical goods on Kickstarter). It has it's own share of problems, like that buyer needs to figure out the TARIC code of the item (which are extremely specific, like "Waterproof footwear with outer soles and uppers of rubber or of plastics, the uppers of which are neither fixed to the sole nor assembled by stitching, riveting, nailing, screwing, plugging or similar processes - Other footwear - Covering the ankle but not covering the knee - With uppers of plastics").
Within EU it used to be that seller collected local VAT if their sales didn't exceed certain threshold to the buyer's country (100k IIRC). There has been some talks about modifying it so that seller would always need to collect buyer country's VAT, but I don't remember what is the current state of it is.