Laws and regulations

The finance ministers of the European Union have agreed on simplified tax rules for online retailers. So, instead of registering for VAT in each EU country, online retailers in the future will be able to file a single tax return for the entire European Union. This should reduce costs for ecommerce companies and increase the tax revenues of EU countries.

Luxembourg has granted illegal tax benefits to Amazon of around 250 million euros. As a result, Amazon paid substantially less tax than other businesses. Because of this unfair tax advantage, the European Union has now ordered Amazon to pay back 250 million euros in taxes to Luxembourg.

More and more ecommerce companies fail to register with product responsibility organizations even though they are acting as distant sellers. This makes it hard to get hold of the responsible person and to enforce the extended producer responsibility obligations. Some voices are now saying EU states should oblige online sellers to take on the duties of producer for the products they sell on behalf on non WEEE registered companies.

Google has decided to split off its own shopping service, Google Shopping, so it would meet demands from the European Union. The EU wasn't particularly happy with how Google displayed product search results, prioritizing results from Google Shopping in favor of results from competitors.

The Turkish government wants to make global ecommerce companies liable for taxes on goods that are sold directly to Turkish customers. The government has proposed a draw law for this, the Turkish Minister of Finance said today.

The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union isn't making things easier for British ecommerce companies. After last year's Brexit vote, some online retailers say it's now harder to hire staff for their warehouses.

About four in five adults in the UK think that online food retailers should give the same kind of information about the product's country of origin on the website as there can be found on food packaging in supermarkets shelves.

The European Commission wants to set up a website to display the cross-border delivery rates offered by logistics companies. With this new initiative, the EU wants to make cross-border parcel delivery services more transparent and better monitored.

The European Commission has opened an investigation into the distribution agreements and practices of the major American clothing brand and retailer Guess. It wants to find out if the retail company restricted retailers from selling online to customers in other European countries.

The German online food startup Delivery Hero confirms it has plans for an initial public offering later this year. It will issue new shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, in hopes to raise about 450 million euros.

Linking to the Online Dispute Resolution platform, an EU solution aimed to help online shoppers settling disputes with merchants across Europe, is obliged for all online retailers in Europe. But does this also apply to for sellers on Amazon? The higher regional court in Dresden decided this isn't the case.

Several online stores, including Amazon, Zalando and H&M, were fined becauses their online promotional campaigns were considered to be misleading. One of the things done was increasing the price and then apply a discount, so it looks like the product is now very cheap by comparison.

If consumers in Europe have a problem with something they've bought online, they can use the Online Dispute Resolution of the European Commission to try to reach an out-of-court settlement. Most complaints came from Germany, but per capita the United Kingdom is one of the biggest complainers about online purchases.

The government of Sweden has proposed a new law that will make it illegal for online shops to sell alcohol to Swedish consumers. The new rules are envisaged to enter into force on 1 January 2018. The law is most likely to go against the EU regulations and the European Union has declined such proposals before. Still it can be bad news for some wine sellers.

Consumers in Europe are still not able to shop online in the European Union without being discriminated against because of their nationality. Online stores across the continent keep refusing customers from other countries, charging higher prices to foreign customers or creating virtual boundaries in some other way.