Switching on new Amazon marketplaces in Seller Central feels deceptively simple. In a couple of clicks you can be “live” in Germany, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, or Japan. But the moment you move stock across a border and start taking orders, you are no longer just an Amazon brand – you are a business with tax obligations in that country.
For most consumer brands, the biggest moving piece is not income tax or customs duty; it’s VAT, GST and other consumption taxes. These quietly shape whether your pricing and margins still work once you go global.
When you look at a new region, two practical questions matter straight away: do you need to register for VAT / GST / consumption tax, and how much will the local rate add on top of your selling price? Get those answers early and expansion becomes a planning exercise, not fire-fighting.
VAT, GST, and marketplace collection – who does what?
Most countries now tax what the customer pays at checkout rather than the seller’s profit. In Europe and the UK this is VAT, in Canada and Australia it’s GST and HST, and in Japan it’s consumption tax. Rates typically sit somewhere between 10% and 25% depending on the country.
On Amazon there’s an extra twist: in many jurisdictions the marketplace is treated as a “marketplace facilitator” or “deemed supplier”. That means Amazon often has the legal obligation to calculate and charge VAT / GST / sales tax on B2C orders and pay it to the tax authority. This is now standard in the EU’s e-commerce VAT rules, in the UK’s post-Brexit regime, in most US states for sales tax, and in places like Canada and Australia for GST/HST.
However, this does not automatically remove your own obligations. Even if Amazon is charging the consumer the correct tax, you may still need to register, file periodic returns and keep proper records. The real question is not “does Amazon handle the tax?” but “what does Amazon handle, and what is still on us as the brand owner?”
How the main regions differ (simple view)
*Always confirm details with a qualified advisor. Rules and thresholds change.
So, do you need to register before you sell?
For the EU and the UK, VAT registration is effectively part of the entry ticket if you plan to hold stock locally. If you are sending pallets into an FBA warehouse in Germany, France or the UK, you should treat applying for VAT numbers and setting up compliance as a pre-launch task, alongside trademarks and barcodes. You may be able to list products before numbers are in place, but you do not want inventory moving around Europe with no plan for how to account for VAT.
In Australia and Canada, registration is usually triggered by turnover thresholds or by the way you operate, for example holding local stock or wanting to reclaim input tax. You may technically be able to start small without a local registration, but if your plan is to build a meaningful presence, tax registration becomes part of that growth journey rather than an optional extra.
Japan adds another nuance. There is a general consumption-tax threshold based on ¥10 million of taxable sales in the “base period” (normally two years prior), below which a business can be treated as exempt. But new and fast-growing overseas sellers can lose this exemption quickly under newer rules, and invoice requirements are tightening. In practice, if you are serious about Amazon Japan, you should not rely on a simple “two-year grace period”. Instead, assume that consumption-tax registration – often via a local tax agent – will become necessary once your sales grow past a modest level, and plan for that in advance.
The US is the odd one out. Because marketplace facilitator rules push most sales-tax collection onto Amazon for marketplace orders, many brands can start selling without separate sales-tax registrations. That makes the US feel simpler, but it doesn’t remove the need to think about other state-level obligations once the business grows, such as income or franchise-tax filings in key states.
Putting VAT and consumption taxes into your launch plan
Once you know broadly how each region works, it becomes much easier to make sensible decisions. For each new marketplace you can ask: will I hold stock there, or ship cross-border? Do I need a tax registration number before I send inventory in? Will Amazon collect the consumer-facing tax, or do I need to configure this myself? And after adding local VAT/GST/consumption tax to my target price, does my margin still make sense next to native competitors?
The goal isn’t to turn into a tax specialist. It’s to avoid being surprised. If you treat VAT and consumption tax as a core part of your market-entry checklist, rather than fine print to “deal with later”, going global via Amazon becomes far less risky – and far more sustainable.
At eBiz Global, we don’t try to do the tax work ourselves – but we work closely with specialist VAT and compliance partners who do this all day, every day for Amazon brands. That means we can help you design your international marketplace strategy, then bring in the right experts to set up registrations, filing routines and tools in each region. You stay focused on product, brand and growth; they keep you on the right side of the rules. Together, that’s what turns VAT from a scary unknown into just another line in a well-planned P&L.