What Does the EU Single VAT Registration Change in 2028?

ViDA’s single VAT registration — Single VAT Registration, or SVR — is no longer a proposal. The Council of the EU adopted Directive (EU) 2025/516 on 11 March 2025. It entered into force on 14 April 2025, and its SVR measures take effect on 1 July 2028. That date does not mean an Estonian company can suddenly sell across the whole EU on one VAT number. What actually arrives is three separate mechanisms: a wider One Stop Shop (OSS) for cross-border sales reporting, a new scheme for moving your own stock into another member state, and mandatory reverse charge. None of the three automatically cancels your existing foreign registrations if you have other taxable turnover in that country that the new rules don’t cover.

Why won’t 1 July 2028 bring a single EU VAT number?

Picture the situation most Baltic e-commerce sellers already know: your stock sits in a warehouse in Germany or Finland, and you sell straight to local customers from there. Right now that usually means a local VAT registration in that country. From 2028, that need shrinks in many cases — but it doesn’t disappear. The legislation is already law, and member states must adopt and publish the national rules transposing it by 30 June 2028, applying them from 1 July 2028. But the substance is more nuanced than “one number, every country.” It’s really a toolkit of three separate mechanisms, each built for a different situation.

What does the ViDA single registration actually change?

Three measures land on 1 July 2028, and they work independently — each works on its own terms.

The three measures landing on 1 July 2028

• A wider OSS: the One Stop Shop, the EU’s single reporting system for online cross-border sales, will now cover a broader set of local B2C sales, not only cross-border distance selling.
• A transfer-of-own-goods scheme: a new scheme for moving your own goods between member states that lets certain stock movements be declared through a single country, without a registration in the destination country.
• Mandatory reverse charge: when the supplier isn’t registered in the country where VAT is due and the buyer already holds a VAT number there, the tax liability shifts automatically to the buyer.

Why none of them adds up to one EU VAT number

All three cut down the situations where you’d need registrations in multiple countries. None of them creates one EU-wide VAT number or a single return covering every transaction a business makes, and the European Commission says exactly that.

What happens when an Estonian company moves stock into another EU country’s warehouse?

This is where most of the confusion sits.

What the scheme covers, and what it excludes

The new transfer-of-own-goods scheme is added to the VAT Directive as Articles 369xa to 369xk, and member states must allow any taxable person making a covered movement to use it. The scheme covers the transfer of goods described in Article 17(1) of the Directive, but it excludes goods that don’t carry full input VAT deduction rights in the destination country. In plain terms: if your goods end up in a partly VAT-exempt use, the scheme won’t fit.

It’s also not optional on a transaction-by-transaction basis. The directive states that the scheme applies to every own-goods movement made by a taxable person who has opted in. You can’t cherry-pick which shipments to run through it.

Filing rules, and the input VAT trap

The return has to be filed electronically, every month, due by the end of the following month, even in months with no stock movement at all. A nil return is still a required return.

One trap is easy to miss on the input VAT side: this scheme’s return doesn’t let you deduct input VAT incurred in either the origin or destination country. You generally have to reclaim it separately, through the VAT refund procedure, or deduct it via a local return if you’re registered there for other reasons. Records need to be kept for ten years from 31 December of the year the goods moved, and made available to the tax authority on request.

When does OSS help, and when do you still need a local registration?

What the wider OSS now covers

From 1 July 2028, the Union OSS scheme widens to also cover certain local B2C goods sales: sales without transport, for instance, or sales where transport starts and ends within the same member state where the seller isn’t established. In practice: if an Estonian wholesaler’s stock sits in a Polish warehouse and gets sold directly to a Polish consumer, that sale can often go through OSS instead of a local Polish VAT return.

Where local registration still applies

But OSS isn’t a universal VAT return. Local registration stays necessary in situations the new rules simply don’t cover: when your business has other taxable turnover in that country that OSS doesn’t include, when the sale is B2B and falls under standard invoicing rules, or when you want to deduct input VAT incurred in that country directly through a local return rather than a refund claim. The European Commission is careful with its wording here. It says the SVR reduces the situations requiring multiple registrations, not that registrations disappear. If your business has a fixed establishment or another local tax obligation that neither OSS nor SVR touches, a local registration remains a real requirement.

What are the deadlines, and where does the €10,000 threshold confusion come from?

Four dates get mixed up constantly, so keep them separate.

Four dates to keep separate

• 30 June 2028: member states must have adopted and published their transposing rules; also the last day new movements can start under the current call-off stock simplification.
• 1 July 2028: the wider OSS, the transfer-of-own-goods scheme, and mandatory reverse charge all take effect.
• 30 June 2029: Article 17a of the Directive stops applying entirely, meaning the old call-off stock simplification finally winds down.
• 1 July 2030: the cross-border B2B digital reporting and e-invoicing requirements, a separate and later ViDA phase, aren’t directly tied to SVR at all.

The €10,000 threshold is a different rule

One clear source of confusion is the turnover threshold. The SVR measures themselves carry no turnover threshold. The €10,000 threshold people often confuse them with is a separate, already-existing rule for certain cross-border B2C distance sales and electronic services. If your business stays under that threshold, different, earlier rules apply to you. SVR doesn’t change that calculation.

The call-off stock simplification, the current arrangement for goods moved into a customer’s warehouse ahead of sale, needs a fresh look before the new scheme fully takes over. Anyone already using it should know it runs in parallel with the new scheme until mid-2029, and should work out which option actually fits their stock flow.

What should you do in 2026 and 2027?

There’s real homework to do over the next two years, rather than waiting for the deadline to arrive.

Four steps worth doing now

• Map every stock and warehouse movement into other member states: where the goods physically go, and whose ownership they’re under.
• Separate B2C sales from B2B sales to VAT-registered buyers, since reverse charge and OSS treat them differently.
• Review your existing foreign registrations and input VAT refund processes, because the transfer-of-own-goods scheme only replaces part of that work.
• Watch Estonia’s implementing rules and the European Commission’s explanatory materials.

What’s still unconfirmed

The Commission has noted, in its implementation strategy, that separate explanatory notes are still being drafted to align the practical application of the own-goods module and reverse charge. Until those land, don’t treat any final requirements for Estonia’s portal or data fields as fixed. As of summer 2026, that part is still unconfirmed.

Anyone counting on the summer of 2028 to solve everything with a single VAT number should revisit that plan before the clarity actually arrives. The dates are fixed — and the mechanisms are written into law. But how much of your existing foreign registration burden you actually shed depends on your specific stock flow and customer base, not on a general rule.