Short answer
Usually yes, if you sell directly to EU consumers and no marketplace stands between you and them. There is no registration threshold for a supplier established outside the EU.
Article 58 of the VAT Directive places B2C telecommunications, broadcasting and electronically supplied services where the consumer is established, has a permanent address or usually resides. Software delivered over the internet with minimal human intervention is the paradigm case. The obligation arises on the first sale.
There are three important qualifications:
- Sales through a marketplace may not be yours at all. The deemed-supplier rules can move the VAT obligation onto the platform.
- Business customers are a different rule. Article 44 plus the Article 196 reverse charge means you invoice EU business customers without VAT.
- Registration in 27 Member States is not required. The non-Union One Stop Shop lets you register once and file one return.
Is what you sell an "electronically supplied service"?
Article 7 of the Implementing Regulation defines the category:
"'Electronically supplied services' ... shall include services which are delivered over the Internet or an electronic network and the nature of which renders their supply essentially automated and involving minimal human intervention, and impossible to ensure in the absence of information technology." —
Article 7(2)(a) expressly covers "the supply of digitised products generally, including software and changes to or upgrades of software". Hosting, automated online databases and automated services generated in response to user input are also within it.
The exclusions matter just as much. Article 7(3) takes out, among others, services of professionals such as lawyers and financial consultants who advise clients by email, and teaching services where the course content is delivered by a teacher over the internet via a remote link. Human delivery over an electronic channel is not an electronically supplied service.
A hybrid product — automated software plus substantive human consulting — needs the components analysed, not a single label applied to the invoice.
Establishing where the consumer belongs
Because the tax follows the consumer, you must evidence the consumer's location. Article 24b of the Implementing Regulation supplies presumptions for fixed land lines, mobile networks and decoders, and a general rule for everything else:
"it shall be presumed that the customer is established, has his permanent address or usually resides at the place identified as such by the supplier on the basis of two items of non-contradictory evidence as listed in Article 24f of this Regulation." —
Article 24f lists what counts: billing address, IP address or other geolocation, bank details, the mobile country code of the SIM, the location of the fixed land line, and other commercially relevant information.
There is a simplification for smaller suppliers. Where supplies falling under that general rule do not exceed EUR 100,000 in the current and preceding calendar year, one item of evidence provided by a person involved in the supply other than the supplier or the customer is enough. Note the shape of this: it is an evidential relief, and the evidence must come from a third party — a payment provider's country data, for instance, rather than the customer's self-declared address.
Capture the evidence at the time of the transaction and store it. Reconstructing consumer location years later is the single most common audit failure in this area.
The non-Union One Stop Shop
You qualify for the non-Union scheme if you are a "taxable person not established within the Community", defined in Article 358a(1) as one who has not established a business in the EU and has no fixed establishment there. A US company with no EU subsidiary, office or staff is squarely within it.
Article 359 requires Member States to permit such a supplier to use the scheme for services supplied to non-taxable persons in the EU, and the scheme then "applies to all those services supplied within the Community" — it is all-in, not selective.
The mechanics:
- Choose a Member State of identification. Article 358a(2) lets a non-EU supplier choose freely which Member State to contact. Unlike the Union scheme, you are not tied to where an establishment sits.
- Register electronically with the details in Article 361: name, postal address, electronic addresses including websites, national tax number if any, and a statement that you have no EU establishment.
- Receive an individual VAT identification number under Article 362, used only for the scheme.
- File quarterly. Article 364 requires a return for each calendar quarter, whether or not supplies were made, by the end of the month following the quarter.
- Report per Member State of consumption. Article 365 requires the value of supplies, the rates applied and the VAT due for each consumption state.
- Pay in euro to an account designated by the Member State of identification, by the return deadline (Articles 366 and 367).
- Keep records for ten years from the end of the year of the transaction, available electronically on request (Article 369).
One structural point often surprises US finance teams: Article 368 provides that a supplier using the scheme may not deduct input VAT through the OSS return. Recovery is through the thirteenth-directive refund procedure instead. The OSS return is a payment mechanism, not a net VAT account.
The marketplace may already be the supplier
Before registering, establish which sales are actually yours.
Article 9a of the Implementing Regulation presumes that a taxable person taking part in the supply of electronically supplied services through a telecommunications network, an interface or a portal such as an app marketplace acts in its own name but on behalf of the provider. That presumption is rebutted only where the provider is explicitly indicated as the supplier, which requires the supplier to be identified both on the invoice and on the customer's bill or receipt.
Crucially, the rebuttal is unavailable to a platform with real commercial control:
"a taxable person who, with regard to a supply of electronically supplied services, authorises the charge to the customer or the delivery of the services, or sets the general terms and conditions of the supply, shall not be permitted to explicitly indicate another person as the supplier of those services." —
Pure payment processing without participation in the supply is excluded by Article 9a(3).
A developer selling only through a major app store therefore often has no EU registration obligation for those sales. A developer selling through a store and a direct website has one for the direct channel. Mixed models are the norm, and the split must be tracked in the billing data.
Business customers sit outside all of this
Where the customer is a taxable person acting as such, Article 44 places the supply in the customer's country and Article 196 makes the customer liable under the reverse charge. You invoice without VAT.
Article 18(3) of the Implementing Regulation governs how a non-EU supplier establishes a customer's business status: a certificate from the customer's tax authority confirming economic activity, or a VAT or similar business number together with a reasonable level of commercial verification.
B2B supplies are not reported through OSS.
What about goods?
If the US company also ships physical products, the analysis is separate. Goods arriving from outside the EU are imports. The Import One Stop Shop covers consignments of an intrinsic value not exceeding EUR 150, excluding excise goods. Goods already held in EU warehouse stock are not imports at all and generally require local registration where the stock sits.
Operational checklist
- Classify each product line against Article 7, separating automated supply from human-delivered services.
- Map which sales run through a deemed-supplier platform and which are direct.
- Split B2B from B2C in billing data; apply the reverse charge to the former.
- Capture two items of non-contradictory location evidence, or one third-party item if under the EUR 100,000 evidential threshold.
- Register for non-Union OSS in a chosen Member State of identification.
- File quarterly and pay in euro by the end of the following month.
- Recover EU input VAT through the refund procedure, not the OSS return.
- Retain records for ten years in a form that can be produced electronically.
Conclusion
A US software company selling directly to EU consumers should expect to owe EU VAT from its first sale. There is no entry threshold for a non-established supplier, and the €10,000 relief in Article 59c is closed to businesses with no Member State of establishment.
The registration burden is nonetheless manageable. Non-Union OSS reduces up to 27 registrations to one, with a quarterly return and a single euro payment. The two questions worth answering before you register are which of your sales the marketplace already accounts for, and whether your location evidence would survive an audit.
Sources
This article provides general legal information, not advice for a specific matter. Laws, facts and procedural deadlines may change the result. Follow the linked primary sources and obtain local advice before acting.