Juliet and I had a really successful trip to Brussels last week.

We have very strong assurances that the threshold we all need for the digital VAT mess – AND a ‘soft landing’ threshold above that – will be included in the EU Commission’s legislation, to be proposed late next year. The Commission is also very aware that this could still take several years to pass and that an interim solution is needed.

Unfortunately, it is not in their power to do anything without the legislation.

However, all is not lost – there is still hope – and it’s good, strong hope:

Basically your Finance Minister can ask for the threshold to be added to the November 13th ECOFIN agenda (big meeting of all the EU Finance Ministers), to be approved on an interim basis, while we all wait for the permanent legislation to be agreed. This could then be ratified by the December Heads Of State Council meeting.

Please block out an hour in your diary for the end of this week for our next Action Challenge. Together we can make a big difference.

We are going to be making it as easy as possible for you, with an outline of suggested points for your letter, the email address and name of your Finance Minister, and a one-page summary of the key objections that were raised by the Finance Minister teams at the Fiscalis event, so your Finance Minister won’t fob you off.

Here’s a reminder of what we’re asking for:

• The €20,000 of cross-border digital sales to be exempt from the new EU Digital VAT rules, instead being liable for your home country VAT instead
• The next €100,000 of cross-border digital sales to have a ‘soft landing’, simplified version of the rules, including one piece of data (e.g. payment processor country code) and guaranteed home country-only audit control

Please keep an eye on our updates and join our Facebook group, to make sure you know when this is all ready.

The outcome of this is by no means guaranteed. That’s why it will need each and every one of us to take action – especially those outside of the UK, because most non-UK Member States are still claiming this is a UK-only problem, even though we know it isn’t.

If you feel you could join us for this action challenge, please let us know (and tell us your country) via the comments. And if you might have an hour spare to help us to translate the letter template and one page summary, please also let me know via the comments (thank you!)

And if you know of any business groups in your country who should be part of this, please share the Action Challenge with them, too.

As always, huge gratitude to you for your support. Without it, we couldn’t have achieved the unprecedented changes we have already seen. We really need to keep going for this next push to make sure we can all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to trading digitally in 2016.

Thank you!

x Clare & the EU VAT Action Team