That's a hell of a high percentage. Glad I'm in the states... Florida doesn't even have a state income tax!

Well, its a damn lot of money, and I'm happy its being avoided. Norway is one of the few countries left in Europe, not part of the damn Union. Wheeehaw, have fun loosers! :P

Jon, you can't really go comparing percentages. The fact is, Europe and the States are two totally different forms of capitalism. In the EU you pay for public services (health care, studies, etc.) in your taxes. In other words the "high" tax levels translate to public services you don't separately pay for. The US generally has separate fees for various services.

Most importantly: a high VAT is not a measurement of tax level, it's a measurement of how much the state is emphasizing consumption in their tax policy. Generally a country with high VAT is one emphasizing consumption -- ie. you mainly pay taxes for the things you buy. Meanwhile, countries with low VAT can have higher income tax, for instance.

To me it sounds like a better deal to have a high VAT and a low income tax than to have a low VAT and a high income tax. A low income tax means you don't pay a huge wad of taxes unless you want to (ie. you go out and buy a lot of stuff).

Just a quick response to Andreas: While I will agree that Norway is probably wise to stay out of the EU, in this situation Norway as a nation is actually losing out. The reason that the EU is now mandating that VAT must be paid by all companies is because it was creating an unfair advantage for foreign (principally US) companies.

Before this legislation, EU-based online businesses were already required to charge EU customers VAT. This is the same as in the US where an online business has to charge state sales tax to customers from the state that the business is located in. However, previously, foreign online businesses were NOT required to charge any of their EU customers VAT. So this led to a situation where a British (or Spanish, etc...) online company and a US online company could charge the same price for the same item, but only the British company had to charge VAT on top of the price. Aside from competition issues, it led to a loophole allowing tax evasion for foreign companies but not EU companies. As you can see, this was a bit unfair and so now ALL companies must charge VAT to EU customers.

If Unsanity was based in the EU, we in the EU would already have been paying VAT on their products. Just trying to put this in context.

Cheers,
Jolin

I also sell shareware over the Internet. I wonder how much of an administrative headache complying with this VAT BS will be. (I have enough to worry about with Australia's GST, where I live.)

I think its untenable to hold online resellers to this ridiculous law. I'm not aware of any other nation state or trading bloc which does it. It's lunacy.

I for one will be pleading ignorance and pretending I didn't hear about it. You'll have to drag me into this kicking and screaming if you ever expect me to comply.