Registering for VAT in Germany when conducting e-commerce

When an e-commerce seller reaches a distance selling threshold, a seller has to register for German VAT. After July 2021 the country-specific VAT threshold was abolished and a new EU-wide threshold of 10.000 EU was introduced. For the registration, the German Tax authorities will require specific registration forms, which will be filled out and submitted along with the following documents:

• VAT certificate from your home country
• Business register extract confirming your company’s validity
• Article of Association 

The average time for registering is 6 months. Once registered the seller will receive two numbers VAT Identification number and Tax number (Steuernummer). The tax number is a more general number, which is being assigned to traders. The VAT identification number is being used for the reporting of intra-community supplies.

In Germany two state bodies are dealing with taxation, one is Federal Central TaxOffice (Bundeszentralamt für Steuern (BZSt)) which deals with national tax matters, and the Local Tax Offices (Finanzamt). In Germany, there are around 650 tax offices and those are responsible for collecting income taxes, calculating and collecting property taxes, collecting business taxes, processing annual tax returns and registering freelancers and new businesses