The 10,000 euro threshold and the date you cross it
Distance sales to private individuals in other member states are taxed in Spain for as long as those sales taken together do not exceed 10,000 € a year. It is a single threshold for the whole Union, not one per country: add up what you sell to France, Italy, Germany and Portugal, all together. Below it, you invoice with Spanish VAT. Above it, the VAT that applies is the buyer's country's, at its rate, which is not ours.
The detail that causes the most grief is the timing: the change takes effect from the very transaction that crosses the threshold, not from the following quarter and not from the following year. Anyone who discovers it in February while reviewing last year already has an open problem in several countries at once. That is why in an online shop the first thing we set up is not the bookkeeping: it is the running count of sales by country.
The one-stop shop, and what it does not fix
To avoid registering in every state there is the one-stop shop: you register under the relevant scheme, you keep filing in Spain, you report the sales broken down by country of destination and you pay over in a single payment the VAT of all of them, which the Spanish authorities then distribute. It is the sensible answer for almost any footwear shop selling within the Union.
It is worth knowing what it does not cover, though. It does not replace your ordinary Spanish returns for the rest of your activity. It does not allow you to deduct input VAT through it: that still goes its own way. And it does not resolve the position of someone storing stock in another country, which can create registration obligations of its own there. We have the detail in invoicing abroad from Spain.
In certain cases the rules make the platform the taxable person for the sale to the consumer, so that it is the platform that charges and pays the VAT. In others the platform is only an intermediary and the obligation is still yours. They are not the same thing and it cannot be inferred from the settlement dashboard: the channel's terms have to be read and the particular case checked before deciding how to declare. If two channels treat the same sale differently, your return has to reflect that.
When the buyer is outside the Union
A sale from the online shop to a British, Swiss or American customer is an export: no Spanish VAT, and the exemption is evidenced with the documentation showing the goods left. The difficulty here is usually commercial rather than fiscal, and it turns up in the customer's inbox: depending on how the delivery terms are agreed, the buyer may find themselves paying import duties and taxes at destination before the parcel is handed over, with the return and the complaint that follow.
Every return, moreover, means issuing a corrective invoice and adjusting the relevant filing. On a high volume of small orders, that is the real work of the quarter.
It is also the part that gets automated worst. A corrective invoice issued in the right country but in the wrong period leaves behind the same mismatch as one never issued at all, and it surfaces the day the channel's figures are compared with the figures in your returns.
Who writes to us from Elx
| Who | Their critical point |
|---|---|
| Footwear brand with its own online shop | The running count towards the 10,000 € threshold, registering for the one-stop shop and the rates per country |
| Manufacturer selling to European wholesalers | Intra-EU supplies, the ROI register and Modelo 349, which is a different matter from selling to consumers |
| Seller on several marketplaces | Working out on which sales the platform is the taxable person and on which it is still them |
| Workshop manufacturing for third parties | Work carried out on order, advance payments and the VAT of each stage |
| Newly self-employed starting to sell abroad | Correct tax registration, and not discovering the threshold after having crossed it |
Working with Elx, remotely
We ask for the sales-by-country report from whichever channel you use and cross-check it against what has been declared. In an afternoon you can see whether the threshold is under control, whether the one-stop shop is being applied properly, and whether there are countries where something should have been declared and was not. Where a shortfall turns up, it is regularised on your own initiative: it costs less and you choose the moment.
After that, the routine, remotely and at a fixed fee, with a quarterly close that includes reconciling returns. We do not guarantee that an inspection will never come; we do undertake that if it comes, the papers justifying each decision were made from the start.
An Elx footwear shop and the order that crosses the threshold
A footwear brand with its own online shop, selling to private customers in other EU countries. The 2026 counter, with distance sales added up across the whole Union, moves like this:
| Period | Sales to EU private customers | Running total | VAT that applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| January to March | 3,200 € | 3,200 € | Spanish |
| April to June | 3,900 € | 7,100 € | Spanish |
| July and August | 1,800 € | 8,900 € | Spanish |
| Order of 12 September to Lyon | 1,400 € | 10,300 € | French, already on this order |
| Rest of the year | 6,500 € | 16,800 € | That of each destination country |
| All of 2027 | From the first euro, because 2026 went over the threshold | That of each destination country | |
Two details slip through. First, the year after crossing the threshold no longer starts from zero: destination VAT applies from January. Second, below the threshold you can also opt for destination VAT, and that choice binds you for two years, so it is not something to try for a quarter. The full workings are in the one-stop shop, OSS.
The country that counts is the one the parcel arrives in, not that of the card or the language the order was placed in, and the proof is the delivery address with the carrier's receipt. A French shop that buys from you without giving a valid VAT number is, for VAT purposes, just another private customer and adds to the counter. If it gives you one and you validate it on VIES, the EU's VAT number checker, the sale leaves the counter and becomes an intra-community supply, with its 349.
The calendar of an Elx online shop using the one-stop shop
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Before the quarter begins, or within the first ten days of the month after the sale that crosses the threshold | Registration in the Union scheme with Modelo 035 |
| 1 to 20 April, July and October, and by 30 January | 303 with the Spanish sales and the input VAT; 349 if you also sell to European wholesalers |
| By the last day of the month after the quarter | Modelo 369 with sales by country: 30 April, 31 July, 31 October and 31 January |
| January | 390, the annual VAT summary |
Modelo 369 is the Spanish filing for the EU one-stop shop, through which foreign VAT is paid here and passed on to each country. If you sell online and do not know where you stand on the counter, tell us about your channels in the international self-employed form.
What almost nobody in Elx asks until the first year-end: in footwear a lot comes back, and a return on a French order already declared through the one-stop shop is not fixed by redoing that return. It is corrected in a later return, within the period the rules set, stating the period and country it relates to. If returns are simply subtracted in the current quarter, the destination country receives figures that do not match those of your platform, and that cross-check exists. Keeping a register of returns by country and original period avoids the problem.