This is really confusing – I have currently removed all my digital downloads available on Etsy this morning as Etsy have sent an e-mail out about it a day before it came into effect (it’s great that they’ve just dropped that on us just like that!) and their attitude is that it’s our responsibility to

figure out which EU country the customer come from (even though at present they don’t supply that information – apparently they’re going to fix that within a few months!)

and charge the appropriate VAT rate on the digital download.

There are a number of people that have pointed out to them that in actual fact they are responsible for sorting the VAT out as it’s being sold via their platform and they’re taking payment for it through their system, and how on earth can they expect their sellers to comply when they can’t even get the information they require, and also there is no option to just restrict the digital download to a specific country (my initial idea was just to put a restriction on the download and make it available only to the UK or non-EU countries as I don’t have time to screw around with all this VAT – I barely make £2,000 a year running both my PC repair business and digital downloads, I don’t have the time or effort to mess around sorting VAT out as well on a couple of sales that last year totalled £10 – I might as well not sell the digital content for all the hassle it’s going to cause but at present Etsy haven’t implemented a restriction option – apparently though that is in the pipeline too – bit late really they should have planned this months ago and told their sellers about it months ago!).