I always find it interesting how people become expats instead of immigrants just based on the fact that their country of origin is the US or the UK. Englishman in Spain? expat. US American in France? Expat. Pakistani in the UK? Immigrant. Mexican in the US? Immigrant.

That’s not how VAT works. As a business you pay VAT as an input tax. You can deduct that from your VAT liability at point of sale. The business is liable to pay VAT on the sale to the end consumer but can (and does) recharge it to the customer. Not a tax expert at all, so I might be off a bit - but I am sure that you don’t pay full VAT on every R&D, production, sale step along the process.

Christian Lindner enters the chat