Damn, thats the trouble with all these multinational conglomerates and all those scheming politicians/bureaucrats. Its for a good reason they are ferried and escorted by dozens of Police motorcyclists and police cars going to and from there 5 star hotels and conference centers.
Boeing the owner of Jeppesen probably has an office in NY, Probably on Wall Street.
If you are EU based:
You are required pay import VAT on all imports, software included.
An EU vendor is required to add VAT to the price, unless
If he is required to add the VAT, but fails to do so, he is deemed to have done so (in the UK, anyway) and you are in the clear.
A non EU vendor is not required to add VAT to the price, but you are supposed to declare the import and pay it.
Obviously software downloads are next to impossible to regulate in reality.
Not just hypothetically but practically yes.
Jeppesen sell to European customers via their Frankfurt subsidiary and they add the VAT of your country of residence (in reality: the invoice address). That’s very logical because software is a product like others too. If you buy a BMW in California, you pay the VAT of your municipality and not the one of Munich.
The EU VAT law was changed some years ago. It did allow a loophole for software where the VAT rate of the country of origin (if within the EU) could be applied. This is why Amazon used to “sell” all download from their Luxemburg subsidiary. That’s all gone now — luckily!
Thanks for taking the hypothetical nto the practical realm.
PS I reluctantly paid the NY State sales tax even though there is an exemption for aviation and related products. 8.75% still su*cks so Im with the Greeks on this one.
Does anyone who gets Jeppesen Data and downloads it via the internet yet has an address in the EU (Germany or Hungary) get charged a VAT or sales tax?
You can PM me if you would rather not report it out in the open.
Thanks for the response ahead of time.
Yes, in Germany I pay 19% VAT on the Jeppesen downloads.
AFAIU in the EU you always get charged VAT; if you are a corporation, you write it off, if you are an end user, you pay it. I’d treat it as an equivalent of the US sales tax.
tmo wrote:
in the EU you always get charged VAT; if you are a corporation, you write it off, if you are an end user, you pay it.
< < quibble of words > > If you are a VAT payer, you deduct it (from what you are due); otherwise, you cannot. The net effect is about the same 
< < / quibble > >
More essentially: it must depend whom you are buying from. If buying from the USA (or any other country outside EU), you cannot get any VAT charged because Uncle Sam has yet to invent this commodity. [[edited to correct: if buying from the USA, the seller cannot charge VAT, but your kind customs office may well add VAT, on top of import duty and excise tax]]
Myself, buying through my VAT-subject limited-viability commerce, can buy from other EU-countries and they make me an invoice without VAT – when registering the invoice I must add VAT manually, charging it to myself and at the same time deducting it. That must be an ingenuity of Belgian tax offices, I suppose.
I’d treat it as an equivalent of the US sales tax.
That is not really correct, there is a fundamental difference:
In the US system, a product that passes through (say) 5 stages from manufacture to end user will (basically) get charged sales tax 5 times ; in the VAT system, one percentage of VAT will be added no matter how many intermediate stages. This was a pro-VAT argument when it was introduced in Europe: VAT promotes the most efficient distribution channels. In practice, I am not so sure it matters very much.
