JAB16 - VATMOSS and the future of web development
by Heather Burns
The EU Place of Supply reform – better known as VATMOSS – was an e-commerce regulation intended to combat the tax games played by multinational corporations worth billions. In practice, the law has had a devastating effect on everyone but multinationals. For small digital businesses just trying to get through the month, compliance requirements are so overwhelming and disproportionate that many have shut down altogether. Members of the web profession have been hit particularly hard both as service providers and as technical implementers.
In this talk, we’ll review what the law means for your businesses and e-commerce operations. We’ll discuss how real-world compliance requirements are never quite as simple as governments think they are on paper, and how everyone involved in this reform got it so incredibly wrong. Finally, we’ll discuss what the VATMOSS experience suggests about the web profession’s future – and how we can turn it around.
The EU Place of Supply reform – better known as VATMOSS – was an e-commerce regulation intended to combat the tax games played by multinational corporations worth billions. In practice, the law has had a devastating effect on everyone but multinationals. For small digital businesses just trying to get through the month, compliance requirements are so overwhelming and disproportionate that many have shut down altogether. Members of the web profession have been hit particularly hard both as service providers and as technical implementers.
In this talk, we’ll review what the law means for your businesses and e-commerce operations. We’ll discuss how real-world compliance requirements are never quite as simple as governments think they are on paper, and how everyone involved in this reform got it so incredibly wrong. Finally, we’ll discuss what the VATMOSS experience suggests about the web profession’s future – and how we can turn it around.