From “the new OSS” to “the new normal”
When OSS was introduced, many sellers saw it as a big change. In reality it’s just the first step of a broader transformation: the complete digitalisation of European VAT.
In recent years, EU institutions have started talking about the “VAT in the Digital Age” (ViDA) package — a framework in which:
- VAT data travels in a much more structured way between member states;
- checks become increasingly automated;
- marketplaces take on an even more central role in ensuring seller compliance.
For anyone using VATManager and selling on Amazon, Shopify, eBay, the point isn’t to know every technical detail of the reform proposals, but to understand the underlying trend.
More structured data, fewer “interpretations”
The trend is clear: the EU wants to reduce the VAT gap and fraud by requiring:
- increasingly precise data (country of consumption, goods categories, amounts, effective rates);
- more frequent, standardised submissions;
- clearer roles for marketplaces and tax intermediaries.
This means that:
- files “cobbled together” by hand in Excel are set to become less and less tolerable;
- excuses like “we couldn’t find the report” will have less and less room;
- having a solid data pipeline (like the one you build with VATManager) becomes almost a prerequisite for working comfortably in the EU.
Marketplaces as tax “gatekeepers”
Already today, in some cases, Amazon and other marketplaces act as deemed reseller, i.e. they take on the VAT responsibility for certain sales themselves (especially from non-EU sellers).
The ViDA trend goes in the same direction: marketplaces and platforms will be increasingly involved as “gatekeepers” of seller compliance.
For you, this has two implications:
- The rules will be increasingly codified upstream (in the marketplace and in VAT software) rather than left to manual interpretation.
- You’ll need to demonstrate consistency between what the platform declares and what you declare via OSS or local VAT numbers.
Having a system like VATManager that reads marketplace reports and translates them into a coherent tax view is the bridge between these two worlds.
Reporting closer to real time
Another element of the ViDA package is the idea — already tangible in some countries — of:
- moving from periodic returns to data flows closer to real time;
- pushing towards e-invoicing, e-reporting and automatic checks.
In practice:
- the idea of “doing the numbers every three months” could evolve towards almost continuous monitoring;
- classification errors (country, rate, nature of the transaction) will be caught earlier and more systematically.
This isn’t a change you need to tackle overnight, but if you build a robust VAT pipeline today (clean data, per-country reports, an audit trail), you’ll already be halfway there tomorrow.
How to prepare concretely, without being overwhelmed
You don’t need to become an EU law expert for every new ViDA document. From an operational standpoint, the sensible steps are:
- treat OSS not as “one more headache”, but as the first version of an increasingly integrated future system;
- consolidate the data from all channels into a single flow, instead of managing each marketplace in isolation;
- adopt tools that keep track of decisions: which rate you applied, when, on what basis.
VATManager was designed with exactly this in mind: centralising data, applying EU VAT rules systematically, leaving a clear trail of the choices made. The more the rules become digital, the more having this structure in place upstream makes the difference.
The seller’s role in the coming years
The good news is that, even in a mature ViDA scenario, your role isn’t to “become a tax official”, but to:
- choose which markets to sell in;
- structure your catalogue, pricing and logistics well;
- decide your strategy across marketplaces, your own stores and offline channels.
The interpretation and technical implementation of VAT rules can and should be offloaded:
- to marketplaces (for what they handle directly);
- to VAT software (for calculation and reporting);
- to your tax advisor (for final validation and dealings with the tax authority).
Your job is to put these three players in a position to do their work well, by providing clean, complete data. That’s exactly what you do when you bring all your flows into VATManager and turn them into clear reports, quarter after quarter.