If I were a small seller I would just ignore this, like many sellers on Temu do.
Before you get into trouble, someone must take notice that you did not register for the recipient fiefdom's protectionism racket. And if that happens, it is not sure that you really are in trouble. As with the GDPR, this kind of regulation is almost unenforcable in practice.
It is enforceable and the financial punishment is severe. There's no US’s LLC equivalent in EU, you basically only have C-Corp/Inc. equivalents (much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax), so most small sellers in EU end up fully liable with their own wealth for the ridiculous up to 200,000€ penalties.
Chinese sellers don’t care, sure, but if you live in EU you do care.
That said while the financial penalties are in practice still not common they are chilling nevertheless.
However, EU is also now starting marketplace level enforcement, so in practice even those Chinese sellers will not be able to sell anything without registration.
> much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax
Assumption. It depends on the country. I know in the UK I opened my limited company for £20 and there is no requirement to have an accountant prepare accounts at my size (and it's simple enough to do yourself).
Ok UK is no longer EU, but as I understand Ireland LTD, Latvia SIA, Estonia OU and Poland sp. z.o.o. are similar and can be ran as a non-resident.
You need to do double entry bookkeeping and prepare annual financial statements for all of those you've mentioned including UK.
In addition, you cannot register LTD in Ireland yourself, the Company's secretary must be a different person. So either you are now in business with a friend or you pay someone.
For any other member country you also run into a language barrier.
Polish "Sp. z o.o." has ~1150€ (5000 PLN) minimal capital requirement.
Registering entity with corporation tax requirement in any other country also means you would need to defend its tax residency (practically impossible if you don't actually do business there) or you have to pay corporation tax in the country you are actually operating in. It's doable but now you are dealing with two different tax authorities and potentially pay taxes in different currency and you can't have books in multiple currencies so get to have lots of fun.
It's much easier to just register US LLC instead at this point. However if you want to do anything physical not digital you end up having to register and do taxes in your resident country anyway. But you can avoid corporation tax at least and keep limited liability.
> It's much easier to just register US LLC instead at this point. However if you want to do anything physical not digital you end up having to register and do taxes in your resident country anyway.
How does remaining digital help here? My understanding was that you'd still be operating a foreign company so the country you reside in is able to claim taxes, regardless of what kind of business you do.
Yes, you need to pay personal income tax in your tax resident country but that's much easier than formalized bookkeeping and corporate income tax (assuming your LLC is DE which is the default). Also for other taxes like VAT you have to register for and pay those regardless of where your company is registered.
US LLC has no formal bookkeeping requirements but you still need to report distributions and contributions to IRS annually (via fax or certified letter), submit annual statements to your state (but those are just hey I'm still alive not financial statements, they are even free in some states like Montana) and maintain registered agent but that's like $50/year. It's crazy just how easy it is.
The digital part is just about what your business can realistically do without it having local or at least EU based presence in some form.
For once you'll have issues with dealing with local businesses and EU marketplaces rather than government.
For example eBay account is basically impossible without having US address and resident VPN. And you'll constantly worry about getting banned, which is already a worry even if you are legitimate local based business since they too big to have to care about customer support like most big corps.
If you're just selling software or something like that it's much easier. The more you go into physical goods or services realm the more hurdles you will have. You can't hire people for example without having a branch or similar. Same for real estate or some equipment like cars.
Also for some services every local business you invoice will potentially have tax withholding to deal with. This is in particular a problem in Poland which has the strictest tax withholding regulations.
I wasn't talking about income tax, this one is almost easy. The country you reside in can claim corporate taxes on your foreign business. You end up having to deal with bureaucracy in both places... Otherwise all freelancers would have their company in Estonia (for easiness) or the member state that has a lowest corporate tax, while living in the one that has the best social security.
Yes that was my criticism exactly, but US LLC by default has no corporate tax (unless you opt-in for some reason) while still having limited liability. It's why it's so unique.
There's no other country in the world that has anything like that.
People don't realize how insanely business friendly US is compared to rest of the world.
That’s cool I didn’t know about EURL. I have researched it before AI and must have missed it or dismissed because of the French language, so my mistake.
Sadly you can't run them as a non-resident afaik. The member state in which you resides will come after you for taxes if you operate a foreign company.
In France the micro-entrepreneur status makes you partially liable, and running a SASU/EURL does require ~200€/m of accounting.
If I were a small seller I would just ignore this, like many sellers on Temu do. Before you get into trouble, someone must take notice that you did not register for the recipient fiefdom's protectionism racket. And if that happens, it is not sure that you really are in trouble. As with the GDPR, this kind of regulation is almost unenforcable in practice.