If Amazon stores your inventory in a German warehouse (including Pan-EU FBA with Germany enabled), you must register for German VAT from the first unit stored; there is no threshold. Vaytax registers you and a licensed German Steuerberater files every VAT return (UStVA). German VAT: €1,299/year all-in, or €99/month if you already have a German VAT number.
The dashboard scenes show an example company with test data.
Three things land the moment German inventory enters the picture. If any of these sounds like you, registration is almost certainly mandatory. One narrow exception since 2025: a very small company established in another EU country (turnover under €100,000 across the EU) can use the EU small-business scheme through its home tax office (§ 19 Abs. 4 UStG); it rarely fits stock held in Germany.
If you use FBA warehouses in Germany, Amazon requires a valid German VAT number. Without one, your listings can be suspended. Pan-EU FBA with Germany enabled means Amazon can move your stock into DE warehouses at any time, and that storage alone creates the obligation.
You file VAT returns (UStVA) from the start, monthly or quarterly as the Finanzamt decides from the VAT you expect to pay, each due by the 10th after the period. Miss a deadline and you face penalties. Foreign sellers are also assigned to specific Finanzämter by country (look up yours), so a tax advisor who knows the process is essential.
Vaytax charges a flat fee per plan, with no per-transaction fees. Moved off VAT Services on Amazon? What to do now →
Most of the FBA sellers we register are not from the UK or US: most are EU companies, from 17 countries so far.
Four steps from "I have FBA inventory in Germany" to "filed and confirmed":
Drop your Amazon VAT Transactions Report in your dashboard each month, or a Shopify orders export, or an export from easybill, lexoffice, sevDesk or any tool that produces a DATEV-format Buchungsstapel. We read the figures line by line and classify every euro: German 19% and 7% sales, intra-EU B2B, exports, and marketplace or OSS sales that are filed elsewhere. The total is checked against your file's own total, so what you see adds up to what you exported. If a file cannot be read reliably (re-saved in Excel, cut off, or the wrong report), we tell you exactly what to fix, never silently wrong. You review everything, and a licensed German tax advisor files the return with the Finanzamt.
You can try it first, free: see your estimated German VAT from your own report, read on your device, nothing uploaded. It is a draft, subject to our review. Not sure which file to export? How to download your Amazon VAT Transactions Report.
Your own store, or a marketplace collecting under the deemed-supplier rules (§ 3 Abs. 3a UStG).
Filed by the 10th after the period. Marketplace-collected sales are reported separately.
Cross-border B2C dispatched from the same German stock.
One return instead of a registration per country. Add-on: €300 setup + €200 per quarter.
Tax-free intra-community supplies to buyers with a valid VAT ID.
The EU sales list (ZM), filed alongside. Included, no add-on.
Import VAT paid at the border comes back as input VAT on your VAT return. EU-established sellers run Union OSS from their home country, not through Germany; the German OSS route is for non-EU and DE-stock sellers.
If Amazon stores your stock in Germany and you sell B2C across the EU, German VAT registration is only half the picture. Your cross-border sales to consumers in other EU countries are reported through the Union One-Stop-Shop (OSS), one quarterly return instead of a registration in every country. And here's the part most sellers miss: a non-EU company (UK, US, China) can use Union OSS too, because stock dispatched from a German warehouse makes Germany your OSS member state of identification, no EU subsidiary required. One German registration plus OSS through Germany covers your EU-wide B2C.
The €10,000 EU-wide threshold that would delay OSS is only available to sellers established inside the EU. If your company is established outside the EU and your EU consumer sales run through Amazon itself, Amazon is the deemed supplier under § 3 Abs. 3a UStG and reports that VAT, so you do not need OSS of your own for those sales. OSS is for what you sell directly through your own shop, and there it applies from the first cross-border sale.
Pan-EU stock movements between Amazon warehouses (intra-community transfers) appear in the same VAT Transactions Report: when you file from your report, we detect them and handle the German side, including your EU sales list (ZM), with every customer VAT ID checked against the EU VIES register before you submit.
OSS is an add-on to your German plan: €300 one-time setup plus €200 per quarter, switched on when you first sell cross-border, which for a marketplace-only seller established outside the EU may be never. You enter your quarterly cross-border sales in the dashboard; a licensed German tax advisor reviews and files the return.
Learn how OSS through Germany works →
Owning the goods and clearing them are two different roles, and the EORI number belongs to the second one. It identifies the declarant (Anmelder), the party that actually files the customs declaration, not the importer (Einführer) whose stock is crossing the border. A company established outside the EU cannot be the declarant on regular commercial or fulfilment imports, so in the normal FBA setup your freight forwarder declares in its own name as your indirect representative, on its own EORI. Nothing is missing from your setup and there is nothing for you to apply for.
Your import VAT is not lost. You deduct the import VAT (Einfuhrumsatzsteuer) you paid at the border as input VAT on your German VAT returns, from your declared start of activity, because what counts is who had the right to dispose of the goods, not whose name was on the declaration. Ask your forwarder for the Einfuhrabgabenbescheid for each shipment: that is the document supporting the deduction, and it is the one thing worth chasing them for.
German customs issues a company established outside the EU its own EORI only where it has its own staff and premises in Germany, or where it is filing its own first customs declaration. Where German customs is responsible for issuing you one, Vaytax files the application as a one-time €199 add-on, using the company documents we already collect. The number itself is free at the Zoll and the €199 is for handling the application. If that is not your situation we will tell you so rather than sell it to you.
Common pattern for FBA sellers: you crossed a German storage or sales threshold months ago and only just discovered the obligation. We file the missing UStVAs retroactively at the same flat €99 per filing, charged once at signup. Pick the first period you need us to file when you register, and we'll catch you up while we handle every month going forward.
The Finanzamt may issue late-filing surcharges (Verspätungszuschlag) directly to your company for any retroactive period. Those are independent of our fees, and we file as quickly as possible to keep them small.
Examples from our own clients, shared without names.
A Croatian company runs its own Amazon store with FBA stock in Germany and sells goods at both the 19% and the 7% rate. It signed up with us in mid-July 2026 and asked to file monthly. When the tax office issued its tax number in early September, it put the company on quarterly returns instead. The tax office sets the rhythm, not the seller.
An Austrian company sells through Amazon Pan-European FBA, covering Germany, France, Italy and Spain. It was already registered for German VAT when it came to us. Each period it uploads its Amazon VAT reports, and we prepare the return from them, the same report-based filing described earlier on this page.
A British food producer sells on Amazon.de from FBA stock, at the reduced 7% rate that applies to most food. It already held a German tax number from before, so the job was to reactivate that number, not to apply for a new one.
A Polish company sells sports and outdoor tech on Amazon.de and several other marketplaces, including Otto and Kaufland, plus its own online shop, with FBA stock in Germany. That German stock is what requires the registration. The company registered through us, and the tax office issued its tax number in September 2026.
No. §25e makes Amazon liable for VAT its sellers leave unpaid, and on certain sales to German consumers Amazon is treated as the seller and pays the VAT itself (§ 3 Abs. 3a UStG). Neither removes your obligation to be registered. Amazon has to record the German VAT ID (USt-IdNr) the Federal Central Tax Office issued to you (§ 22f UStG) to keep your account active. Your UStVA still needs to be filed, marketplace-collected sales are reported separately, and all inventory movements, B2B sales, and non-marketplace revenue remain fully your responsibility.
Normally no. Once Amazon holds a valid VAT number for you, it invoices referral fees, FBA fulfilment fees and storage charges without VAT under the B2B reverse charge, so the fee invoice shows a net amount and a reverse-charge note instead of a VAT line. Reverse charge means the VAT is accounted for by you rather than charged by Amazon. For cross-border B2B services the place of supply is where your business is established (§ 3a Abs. 2 UStG, Article 44 of the EU VAT Directive), so for a company established outside Germany the fees are accounted for in your home country and do not belong on your German UStVA. Your German return covers your German sales and the German input VAT you incur. If Amazon does not hold a valid VAT number for you, it can charge local VAT on the fees instead. How reverse-charge invoices must be worded →
Yes, and it is separate from VAT. German packaging law (since 12 August 2026 the VerpackDG, which replaced the Packaging Act, VerpackG) requires you to register in the LUCID packaging register before selling, and marketplaces must check for it, so Amazon blocks listings without a LUCID number. LUCID registration is free and you do it yourself, directly with the packaging register; a separate dual-system licence for your packaging volumes is the paid part. If your company has no branch in Germany, you must also appoint a German authorised representative for packaging before your first sale and name it in your LUCID registration. This sits outside the Vaytax VAT service: we flag it during onboarding, but you register for LUCID yourself, and we do not act as packaging representative. LUCID and VerpackG explained →
No. Germany does not require a fiscal representative for standard VAT registration and filing; a licensed German tax advisor acting for you is enough. This applies to EU and non-EU companies alike. A separate fiscal-representation fee is not needed for standard German VAT compliance. Full breakdown →
Foreign Amazon FBA sellers are among the most frequently audited, because the Finanzamt receives your marketplace transaction data under §22f UStG and cross-checks it against warehouse stock, import VAT, and your filed returns. If you receive an audit notice (Prüfungsanordnung), a licensed German tax advisor should handle the Finanzamt correspondence and represent you. Amazon VAT audit help →
Question we didn't cover? Send us a message →
The dashboard
Upload your Amazon report
We read every line and draft the figures; you review and confirm.
Waiting on youYour Steuerberater files
A licensed German tax advisor reviews the figures and submits the return to the Finanzamt.
In progressConfirmation in the dashboard
The filing confirmation lands in your dashboard and by email.
DeliveredNo per-sale surcharge. No fiscal-rep fee. The price you see covers your routine recurring filings; one-off work like backfiling or audit support is always quoted up front. Tax advisory beyond routine filings is €200 per hour, quoted before any work starts. See the full pricing page →
New to German VAT · Path A
German VAT registration included. Charged in full at signup. Renews yearly.
What's included
Already registered · Path B
Already hold a German VAT number? Skip the registration fee and move straight into filing. €1,099/year if you pay annually.
Or €1,099 billed yearly. No registration fee.
Registered with the Steuerberaterkammer Rheinland-Pfalz. Reviews and files every return with the Finanzamt before it goes out.
A service of FRADECO GmbH. Your filings never leave the practice.
German VAT registration, every return, and the annual return, handled end to end by a licensed German Steuerberater. 4 to 8 weeks to a working Steuernummer, then from €99/month for routine compliance, two plans (Standard and Pro), both flat.
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