The short version
- For most EU-bound orders valued at €150 or less, eBay is legally the "deemed supplier" and collects the VAT itself at checkout, under a scheme called IOSS - a UK seller does not register for IOSS themselves in this situation.
- France is an exception - eBay collects VAT there regardless of the order's value, not only under the €150 threshold that applies elsewhere in the EU.
- Above €150, the buyer generally pays import VAT directly, and a flat customs duty also applies to consignments at or under €150, collected at checkout when the order goes through one of eBay's own managed shipping programmes.
- For Australia, eBay has collected GST itself on orders under AU $1,000 since 1 July 2018, based on the item's price alone, not including postage - and remits it directly to the Australian Taxation Office.
- None of this replaces the seller's own responsibilities - giving eBay's IOSS number to a courier correctly, and keeping VAT numbers and shipping locations accurate on the account, both stay a seller's own job even while eBay handles the actual collection.
What "deemed supplier" actually means for an EU order
Under EU rules, when a parcel imported into the EU is valued at €150 or less, eBay itself is treated as the seller for VAT purposes - the "deemed supplier" - rather than the actual seller whose item is inside the box. In practice, this means eBay collects the VAT from the buyer at checkout and pays it to the relevant EU tax authority directly, through a scheme called the Import One-Stop Shop, or IOSS. A UK seller selling into the EU under this threshold does not need to register for IOSS themselves - eBay's own registration covers it, and eBay provides its own IOSS number for the order's customs paperwork.
Checked 26 September 2026: France is a specific, named exception to the €150 threshold - eBay's own guidance states it collects VAT on all goods sent to French addresses regardless of the parcel's value, not only below €150 as applies across the rest of the EU. Worth knowing specifically if France is a meaningful part of a seller's own EU sales.
The one thing that is still a seller's own job
Even though eBay collects and remits the VAT itself, the IOSS number covering that order still has to reach the courier correctly - as part of the export pre-notification paperwork, or in the specific "Importer's Reference" field a carrier's own system provides for it. Get this step wrong, and the practical result is a buyer being asked to pay the VAT a second time at the border, on an order where eBay already collected it once at checkout - not a fine for the seller directly, but a genuinely bad experience for a buyer that generates exactly the kind of message and potential dispute worth avoiding in the first place.
What happens above the €150 threshold
For an order valued above €150, the deemed-supplier arrangement does not apply, and the buyer is generally responsible for paying import VAT directly through the normal customs process at the border, rather than having it collected in advance at checkout. A flat customs duty also applies specifically to consignments valued at €150 or under sent from outside the EU - a separate charge from VAT, applied per item type rather than per unit, and collected at checkout automatically when an order is shipped through one of eBay's own managed international programmes, such as the Global Shipping Programme already covered in detail here.
Australia: a different scheme, a different number
Australia runs its own, separate arrangement, and has done since 1 July 2018: eBay collects GST directly from Australian buyers on goods imported from outside Australia valued under AU $1,000, and remits it to the Australian Taxation Office on the seller's behalf. The $1,000 figure is based on the item's own price alone - postage is not counted toward it - so a genuinely low-cost item with a disproportionately high shipping charge is still assessed against its own price, not the order's total. Above that AU $1,000 threshold, the normal Australian import process applies instead, and GST is handled at the border rather than collected by eBay at the point of sale.
Checked 27 September 2026, directly against eBay's own guidance on taxes and import charges: eBay runs the equivalent scheme for New Zealand, collecting GST on orders up to NZ $1,000 imported there, mirroring the Australian mechanism closely enough that a seller already comfortable selling to Australia is not starting from nothing when a New Zealand order arrives - the same basic pattern of an automatic, checkout-collected charge under a specific currency threshold applies, simply with New Zealand's own number in place of Australia's.
Norway: a third scheme, with its own genuinely different mechanic
Checked 27 September 2026, directly against eBay's own guidance on VAT import regulations for Norway: Norway runs its own scheme, called VOEC (VAT On E-Commerce), collecting VAT on items valued below 3,000 NOK. The genuinely worth-knowing detail is that the threshold itself and the actual VAT calculation use two different bases - whether an item qualifies is judged on its own net price alone, excluding shipping, but once it qualifies, the VAT eBay actually collects is calculated on the full order total, shipping and any insurance included. This is a real, meaningful difference from the Australian scheme covered above, where both the qualifying threshold and the GST calculation use the item's price alone throughout. Since 1 January 2024, eBay's own guidance is explicit that the VOEC number must be given directly to the carrier electronically, not simply printed on the parcel label - a label alone no longer satisfies Norwegian customs, and a seller relying on the older, label-only habit risks exactly the double-taxation-at-the-border problem already covered for the EU's own IOSS scheme above.
A further point worth checking directly: destinations outside these named schemes
Checked 28 September 2026: the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Norway are not the only destinations a UK furniture seller might genuinely ship to, and it would be inaccurate to imply every country runs an equivalent automatic, checkout-collected scheme simply because these four happen to. Switzerland, for instance, sits outside the EU's own VAT area entirely and runs its own separate import VAT and customs process at the border, distinct from any of the four schemes described above. The honest, general rule worth applying to any destination not already named specifically in this piece is to check that country's own current eBay tax guidance directly before assuming either that VAT is collected automatically at checkout, in the EU or Australian style, or that it definitely isn't - both assumptions carry a real risk of getting a specific new destination's own rules wrong.
A worked example, to make the two schemes concrete
A £45 side table sold to a buyer in Germany, sent by a courier through eBay's own International Shipping option: the order is under the €150 threshold, so eBay collects the VAT from the buyer at checkout under IOSS, and the flat low-value customs duty as well - both shown to the buyer before they ever confirm the order, and both handled without the seller registering for anything extra. The same table sold to a buyer in Sydney: eBay collects Australian GST at checkout in the same automatic way, because the item's own price sits comfortably under the AU $1,000 threshold - the only genuine extra step on the seller's side, in both cases, is confirming the courier used actually delivers to that address at a shipping cost that still leaves a workable margin once it is added to the sums already worked out for a domestic sale.
The same table sold to a buyer in Oslo sits under Norway's 3,000 NOK threshold on its own net price, so eBay collects VOEC at checkout too - but calculated on the table's price plus its shipping cost together, not the price alone, a small but real difference from how the Australian and New Zealand thresholds are actually applied. Sold instead to a buyer in Auckland, the same basic pattern as Australia applies again, simply measured against the NZ $1,000 threshold rather than the Australian one - four genuinely different national schemes, each automatic at the point of sale, each with its own specific threshold and its own small mechanical differences worth knowing rather than assumed identical purely because the end result, GST or VAT collected automatically at checkout, looks the same from the seller's own side of the transaction.
What actually still needs a seller's own attention
None of the automatic collection above removes the ordinary practical questions a UK seller selling internationally still has to answer for themselves: whether a specific courier genuinely delivers to the destination reliably and at a workable cost, whether the item itself is even legal to import into that market at all, and whether the account's own VAT number and registered shipping locations are kept accurate - eBay's own guidance is specific that inaccurate account details are a seller's own responsibility to fix, not something the deemed-supplier scheme quietly absorbs. Furniture in particular is worth a specific pause here: bulky, heavy items carry international postage costs that can turn an otherwise reasonable domestic margin into a loss the moment the destination changes, well before VAT or GST ever enters the calculation.
Where this stays worth watching directly
Sellhelm's own Order Desk tracks the same dispatch timeline and courier detail for every order regardless of where it is going - the automatic VAT and GST collection above happens entirely on eBay's own side of the transaction, not inside Sellhelm, so the actual IOSS paperwork and IOSS-number-to-courier step stays exactly the kind of detail worth checking directly against eBay's own current guidance for a specific order, not assumed to be handled by any third-party tool.
Questions people ask
Do I need to register for IOSS myself to sell into the EU?
Not for orders eBay collects VAT on as deemed supplier - generally parcels valued at €150 or less. eBay’s own IOSS registration covers those orders; a seller instead needs to make sure eBay’s IOSS number reaches the courier correctly.
What happens to VAT on EU orders above €150?
The deemed-supplier arrangement does not apply above €150, and the buyer is generally responsible for paying import VAT directly through the normal customs process rather than having it collected at checkout.
Does eBay collect GST automatically for orders sent to Australia?
Yes, for orders under AU $1,000 based on the item’s price alone (not including postage), eBay has collected and remitted GST to the Australian Taxation Office since 1 July 2018.
What is still my own responsibility if eBay collects the VAT or GST?
Making sure eBay’s IOSS number reaches the courier correctly on export paperwork, and keeping the account’s own VAT number and shipping locations accurate - getting either wrong can mean a buyer is charged VAT twice.