Heads up to Sellers who accept orders and ship to Belgium:
Belgium Postal Services tends to ignore shipment documents showing that eBay collected VAT from buyer under the IOSS VAT Agency Scheme and they send request to receiver to pay again the VAT.
To ensure that they don't have a single reason to charge your buyer the VAT again do the following:
1. On form CN-25 (or custom declaration) ensure that the VAT IOSS number provided by eBay is written at the bottom of the address. This way, the advance notification the sending postal provider will communicate a message that this shipment tracking is already cleared from VAT point of view.
2. The shipment documents must include the eBay invoice showing the amount breakdown and the VAT IOSS number
3. On the address label you print and attach to the parcel, ensure your write down the VAT IOSS number in clear letter: large font size in red color.
Scan all the 3 above documents and send them to your buyer to ensure he has a copy. Ask the buyer to register receiving the shipment on Belgium Post application using the tracking number and to upload the scanned document to the registration.
Doing all above will minimize the unfortunate occurrence of requesting the buyer to pay the VAT again. It will not eliminate it which is another point to eBay.de (who is the registered eBay EU entity for IOSS VAT Agency scheme) to bring up with the Belgium authorities.
