Joining Pan-EU FBA. How many VAT registrations is that, really?
Pan-EU cuts your fulfilment fees by letting Amazon move stock across Europe. The tax side: every country where your inventory sleeps becomes a country where you file.
One registration per storage country. OSS covers the sales layer, not the storage layer.
Activating Pan-EU (or any program letting Amazon store your goods across borders: CEE, EFN with storage) means local VAT registration in every country that holds your stock. Germany, Poland and Czechia are the standard opening set; France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands join depending on your program settings. The registrations are triggered by storage, so switching a country on in Seller Central is the tax event.
The Union OSS then sits on top for cross-border B2C sales, one quarterly return instead of country-by-country filings for those sales. What OSS never covers: domestic sales inside a storage country, the intra-Community stock transfers Amazon makes for you, and local input-VAT recovery. Those live in the local registrations.
Three layers, cleanly separated
Layer one, local registrations: each storage country taxes domestic sales from its warehouses and wants the stock movements reported. Layer two, intra-Community transfers: every time Amazon relocates your inventory across a border, that is a reportable transfer out of one country and an acquisition in the other, with the ZM (EC Sales List) on the German side. Layer three, OSS: cross-border B2C sales from any warehouse to any other EU country, one quarterly return.
Non-EU sellers add a detail: without an EU establishment, your Union OSS registration goes through a member state where your dispatches start. With German stock, Germany works as the member state of identification, which is a setup we handle as an add-on (€250 one-time plus €150 per quarterly return).
What Vaytax does and does not file
We file Germany: registration, monthly Umsatzsteuervoranmeldungen, ZM, the annual return, and the German-based OSS return where applicable. Poland, Czechia and the other storage countries need local filings we do not provide; most Pan-EU sellers run one provider per country or a network. We would rather tell you that on a public page than after onboarding.
Sequencing advice from the cases we see: turn countries on one at a time as the registrations complete, rather than flipping all of Pan-EU on and discovering the Polish backlog later. Amazon lets you control storage countries in the settings.
Sequencing Pan-EU without back-filing
- Map where stock will actually sit. Pan-EU settings show the storage countries you are enabling. Each one is a registration.
- Register Germany first. It is usually the biggest market and the anchor for OSS if you are non-EU established. 4 to 8 weeks.
- Line up the other storage countries. Local providers or your existing accountant network; start PL and CZ early, their backlogs vary.
- Layer OSS on top. Cross-border B2C in one quarterly return. German side with us: €1,199 per year all-in: German VAT registration, all monthly filings and the annual return, billed yearly starting at signup, OSS add-on €250 plus €150 per quarter.
Germany is the anchor. Start it first.
German registration, monthly filings, ZM and the OSS layer from one English-speaking, licensed German tax practice.
Start with Germany Licensed German tax advisor · English throughout · No calls requiredAsked about this setup
No. OSS only covers cross-border B2C sales. Domestic sales in a storage country, the stock transfers between warehouses and local input-VAT recovery all require the local registration. That is why Pan-EU means multiple registrations plus OSS, not OSS instead of them.
You need each country's registration by the time stock is stored there. The clean approach is enabling storage countries stepwise as numbers arrive; the expensive approach is enabling everything and back-filing the countries that were not ready.
Without an EU establishment, you register for the Union OSS in a member state from which your goods are dispatched. With German FBA stock, Germany serves as the member state of identification; we set that up alongside the German VAT registration.
No. We file Germany (and the German-anchored OSS return). For the other storage countries you keep local providers; we coordinate cleanly by giving you a correct German ledger to hand them.
Sources & official references