Companies who did not yet start with any kind of webshop. But will most probably do in the near future because of the growing market potential
EPSEDA stands for European Private Sales Excise Duty Application is a software application developed by De Groof Trading BV, a Belgian based company originally active in the wholesale and online business of food and drinks.
Due to the own online sales activities, we were confronted with the need for a tool which allowed us to calculate the excise duties related to the selling of alcoholic beverages to private individuals living in other European countries.
We took the decision to develop an all-round software application for the calculation of excise duties and national taxes related to the online sale of any kind of alcoholic beverages towards private individuals and this from any E.U. country to any E.U. country.
Between July 2019 and July 2020, based on a large consumer survey, an estimated EUR 0 million worth of alcohol was sold online, of which 106 million through foreign websites. The last couple of years this amount has even increased drastically. According to traffic data, most visitors reach foreign websites where alcohol is sold directly (57%), via search engines (31%) or via an online advertisement ('paid',9%). Authorities have become more and more aware of this growing importance. In line with the OSS-VAT implementation, the importance of allocating the different kind of duties and taxes to the country involved has grown.
When you look at the market of alcoholic beverage producers and distributors you will see 3 kind of companies when it comes to online sales to foreign citizens :
Companies who did not yet start with any kind of webshop. But will most probably do in the near future because of the growing market potential
Companies who limit the online sales to their own national population
Companies who ignore the legislation and sell to foreign private customers . In this case companies have paid the national excise duties at the clearing of the beverages
Authorities will more and more perform stricter controls and failure to comply with the excise duty legislation may lead to the temporary closure of the entire activity of the company. Is this a risk worth taking?