Comment by Robin_f
9 hours ago
This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.
9 hours ago
This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.
Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses.
Another small business owner reported their experience in this Reddit thread, looks really bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1vrz88a/comment/p4i...
I’m as pro-EU as one can get but that’s a mistake we should solve asap
The main reason I'm not particularly pro EU is the following.
How would we even sack the leadership?
Who is the leadership? The Council - then it would be national elections etc for the individual national representatives; the Commission - then it would be the European Parliament.
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It seems like it only applies to companies that:
- make packaging
- buy branded packaging and are not micro-entreprises
So if you are not using branded packaging, and if you are using branded packaging but you are a micro entreprise: The company manufacturing your packaging is the one responsible for this regulation
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad1...
No matter how small the risk is
That's just an excuse then. Register with whatever local authority in your country handles these things and in the unlikely event you get a grumpy letter just send them a copy of your registration documents.
Do you send them as your business or as yourself? If it's the latter, then I would consider forming a business to take on the risk. That's not free either, but think of it as insurance.
Some people did the same when VATMOSS was introduced.
And those people were idiots. MOSS was trivial to implement and an improvement of what was there before. I implemented it myself for our company.
Not far small businesses with very small numbers of cross border sales.
Do you not cross the street given the risk of being hit by a bus?
Fortunately, buses are not invisible and you can look for a bus before crossing a street to gauge and control your risk of being struck by one.
Schrodinger's Bus: You do not know if you will be hit until you are already in the street. I feel like there is some promise in naming a band this, but it is unfortunate it so often is what people have to deal with when bringing an item to market.
... but you can still fail to notice one, and you can gauge and to some degree control your risk of being fined.
In fact, if you sell 10 hobby prototype boards to other hobbyists, you probably have a higher risk of getting hit by a bus on the way to the post office than you do of being fined.
Sorry, that's a really poor analogy.
Because there's a handful of companies (lectronz, seeedstudio, ebay, etc) that have the full shipment lists. So the compliance agencies don't have to go after individual business records one business at a time; they can go to probably fewer than 10 businesses and find the suggested mass rule breaking with a sql join.
See also the national tax agencies with NACE codes (euro version of NAICS).
Umm akchully, not crossing a highway to avoid being hit is a perfectly sane course of action.
except he said "street" not "highway"