Comment by tzs

Briefly, for each EU country you sell into you must:

• Register with the government package registry in each country.

• Sign contracts with a "Producer Responsibility Organization" in the country to fund local recycling.

• Track the exact weight of all the packaging materials sent to that country.

• Submit reports and pay recycling fees.

• If you are based outside the EU, you have to appoint a local representative for these matters in the country. If you are based in the EU you are also supposed to do that, but the European Commission has recommended that members states suspend penalties for EU companies that do not do this.

If you use "fulfilled by Amazon" you still have to do all the above for your packaging. Amazon has to do it just for the outer packaging they ship your stuff in.

Officials have recognized this will be a major burden on many small businesses and are working on revising it to address that in legislation due later this year. Many are pushing for something similar to the way VAT is handled to be implemented for this.

The way VAT works is that you register with just your own country (or a country of your choice if you are not in the EU but sell there). You collect the correct amount of VAR on sales to each EU country, but then just file with and pay the country you are registered with. They tax authorities deal with then reporting to the other countries and paying them their VAT.