We will be registering for VAT soon, as our sales increased this year, and we will have to deal with this new taxation mess. However, as a seller, I reckon that going through too many hoops would just cause headaches. For example, the location of a buyer, the billing address and the actual usage of a product may all be different, but, at the same time, I consider blocking a purchase because of information conflict a very bad idea. Customer experience is critical, regardless of what taxation rules say, and we all know that customers can drop a purchase for much less than that.

I could be on a trip to the UK, buying a product for my company in Germany, planning to use it for one of my customers in France. If the purchase were to be blocked with a message like “sorry, we can’t figure out if we should apply VAT, or what rate is the right one”, I would just move on. The amount of cancelled purchases could be quite high, and so could be the loss of revenue and the amount of emails of “your site doesn’t work!” complaints.