Europeans - WTF is VAT?
 

I see the abbriviation VAT on just about everything that requires an exchange of money... what the fuck is it?

it's tax id if you live in eu and have company you must have tax id , called VAT

Sales tax

Sales tax. It's 19% in The Netherlands

Value added tax (VAT) is a sales tax levied on the sale of goods and services. In some countries, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, this tax is known as "goods and services tax" or GST. VAT is an indirect tax, in that the tax is collected from someone other than the person who actually bears the cost of the tax.

VAT do you mean?

Actually VAT was a extra tax added to consumers sometime around 60-70s I think (not really sure, but a long time ago)
More or less it means everytime a consumer buy something you have to add a extra x% on top of your price and pay as a sales tax, the VAT.
A company can save their reciepts and get any VAT paid back again, and 2 companies within EU does not need to charge VAT when dealing with each other.
Anyone doing business within EU (ie have sales / members / customers / whatever) need to be registered to pay VAT once they reached ?100K in total for all countries that is a member of EU (the amount does NOT reset every year)
Anyone that have charged more than 3500 monthly transactions for their membership site (asuming price is ~?30 / $35) basicly need to charge VAT from their EU customers

good post Due, that's exactly how it goes. Within the same country in EU there are different VAT rates based on the type of products/service. For example although in Cyprus VAT Is 15% when you purchase consuming goods like food is much lower or 0. When you buy alcohol products etc it's 15%

to conclude any tax is bad thing

thanks :)

It's an example of how Europeans government keep their hands off the Internet by taxing everything Europeans by on the Internet, even if they are buying things from the USA.
:1orglaugh

That was supposedly implemented.. I have yet to see it in action to be honest. The worst i've heard of is Germany being taxed to use the internet.

I'm not a fan of the VAT tbh, I just purchased £3000 in computer equipment.. £500 was VAT. [17.5%]

Financial bumrape for all.

Very Annoying Tax

if you become vat registered you can claim it all back.

value added tax..see? that's culture!

Funny(well funny :-( ) thing is with gasoline we have

1. Gas price
2. Gas Taxes
3. VAT over 1+2

Now that is shitty huh

In Spain it's 16%.

If you have a company you can get it back from anything you buy.

- You buy stuff for 1000?+16%= 1160 ? (paying that crap 160? more)
- You sell stuff for 2000?+16%= 2320 ? (recovering that 160? + 160? more in excess)
- At the end of your tax period, you return to the government the excess of VAT, so in that example, you return to the government that 160? in excess you got from your sales.

At the end you pay vat but also receive it and the excess is sent to the government so you don't end or gain anything from vat as company. The only fucked part is the final customer who pays the vat and can't recover it.

25% in Norway...

Value Added Tax - sales tax.

In europe, at least in most countries, it is required by law to have the prices shown to customers include VAT already.

So if you see a 19.99 price somewhere it really IS 19.99 and not 19.99 + some tax you never heard of...

I kinda prefer that over the way that the US and Canada does it.

What the heck do I care if something costs $500 if I actually have to be $550 since they got to add 10% onto it??

VAT, BTW whatever you want to call it...the abbreviation should be deleted from the dictionary....

Should be changed to MRO - Money Ripp Off

I wish that's the way we did it in North America!

yeah, that was one of my biggest beefs when I moved to Canada.. you can't go to the grocery store and KNOW how much things will cost cos some things you have to pay GST on and some things you don't.. and then there's also PST on some things too!

made shopping even worse for me (and I HATE shopping to begin with)

You remember when VAT was introduced that the claims were this was going to replace income tax and be a tax collected based on spending power??

OK.. They've had the best part of quarter century to implement it, meanwhile collecting both income tax and VAT...

So... agree it's a "Very Annoying Tax"! :1orglaugh


PS And another reason I don't pay either and moved the hell out to "no tax" regions!

So this is why everything seems so expensive in Europe?

I was looking at hotels...

A decent hotel in Santa Barbara can go for say $80 a night. Nothing fancy. Not right in the middle of it all... But not on the outskirts either.

In Europe, the same hotel in a similar location would be like $110 USD. But the VAT has been added to the cost already I assume and that is why it is so much more expensive?

I heard that you guys in the U. K. have to pay an annual fee of about $200.00 USD to own a television. If you get caught not paying the fee the fine is about $1,000.00 USD. Is that true?

That is the TV license and essentially it pays for the BBC which is a comerical free broadcaster. Some of the money goes to Channel 4 too but primarily the BBC. You have to have a license to watch tv and in that money is fed back into the public broadcaster. To me it is worth it for the BBC news alone but I am a news junkie :)

I believe you can watch for a lot less if you have a black and white tv..lol