# ViDA's quiet half: the VAT registrations that disappear in 2028, and the one that replaces them

Source: https://euornot.eu/vida-single-vat-registration-2028/
Published: 2026-08-14
Section: VAT
Tags: vat, vida, oss, ioss, single-vat-registration, cross-border
Licence: CC BY 4.0 — attribute euornot.eu

Summary: The e-invoicing headlines are about 2030. For anyone moving goods across EU borders the operative date is 1 July 2028, when OSS swallows domestic B2C sales, call-off stock is retired and a new scheme covers transfers of your own stock.

Key dates:
- 11 Mar 2025: ViDA adopted, Directive (EU) 2025/516
- 1 Jan 2027: OSS and IOSS clarifications; interim reporting rules
- 1 Jul 2028: Single VAT registration; transfers of own goods scheme
- 30 Jun 2028: Last day to enter goods into call-off stock
- 30 Jun 2029: Call-off stock ceases to apply entirely
- 1 Jul 2030: Digital reporting for cross-border B2B

VAT in the Digital Age is usually discussed as an e-invoicing reform, and e-invoicing is the
part that arrives last: digital reporting for cross-border business-to-business transactions
starts on 1 July 2030, with national real-time reporting systems required to converge on it
by 1 January 2035. For a merchant shipping goods, the date that matters is two years earlier,
and it goes in the opposite direction from everything else this site tracks. It removes
registrations rather than adding them.

The plumbing for it was published three weeks ago. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU)
2026/1869, of 27 July 2026, rewrites the detailed rules for the special schemes — how a
business identifies itself, registers, and files — with most of it applying from 1 July 2028
and one interim piece from 1 January 2027.

## What changes on 1 July 2028

Three things in Directive (EU) 2025/516 land together.

**The Union OSS extends to domestic B2C supplies.** Today OSS covers distance sales across a
border. From 2028 it also covers domestic supplies of goods to consumers made by a taxable
person who is not established in the member state of consumption. The classic trigger for a
foreign VAT registration — holding stock in a warehouse in another member state and selling
locally from it — stops requiring one.

**A new special scheme covers transfers of your own goods.** Moving your own stock from a
warehouse in one member state to a warehouse in another is a deemed supply and an acquisition,
and it is the reason so many small sellers hold registrations they otherwise would not need.
The new scheme lets a business report those movements on a single return and be identified for
VAT in the member state of identification only. It is optional.

**The reverse charge becomes mandatory in a defined case.** Under the amended Article 194,
where a supply is made by a person not established in the member state where the VAT is due,
and the customer is already identified for VAT there, the customer accounts for the tax. That
removes another common reason to register.

## Call-off stock is being retired

The call-off stock simplification in Article 17a goes, in two steps that are easy to misread:

- **30 June 2028** — the last day goods may be dispatched or transported into a call-off stock
  arrangement.
- **30 June 2029** — Article 17a ceases to apply at all, which gives arrangements started
  before the first date the usual twelve-month window to be sold or returned.

Anything still sitting in call-off stock after June 2029 falls back to ordinary rules, and the
new transfers-of-own-goods scheme is what it is expected to fall back into.

## What this does not do

It does not create a single EU VAT number. It reduces the *reasons* a registration is
triggered; it does not merge the registrations you hold for other reasons, and B2B supplies
outside the reverse charge case are untouched.

It does not make IOSS mandatory. That proposal did not survive into the adopted text, and the
import channel is being tightened from the customs side instead — through the
[deemed-importer rule and the handling fee](/customs-reform-agreed-handling-fee-data-hub-dates/)
rather than through the VAT directive.

And it does not help with extended producer responsibility. EPR registration and the
[authorised representative mandate](/ppwr-eu-2025-40-applies-today/) are environmental
obligations with their own national registers, untouched by anything in ViDA. A seller can end
up in 2028 with one VAT registration and twenty-seven EPR ones, which is a fair summary of how
unevenly "single market" has been applied across the two regimes.

## The sequence, to 2035

| Date | What |
| --- | --- |
| 1 Jan 2027 | OSS and IOSS clarifications; e-charging supplies into OSS |
| 1 Jul 2028 | Single VAT registration; transfers of own goods; mandatory reverse charge |
| 30 Jun 2028 | No new call-off stock arrangements |
| 30 Jun 2029 | Article 17a ceases to apply |
| 1 Jul 2030 | Digital reporting and e-invoicing for cross-border B2B |
| 1 Jan 2035 | National real-time reporting systems align with the EU scheme |

Two years is not long for a change that alters where a business is registered. The useful
work in 2026 and 2027 is knowing which of your current registrations exist only because of
stock movements or local sales from foreign warehouses — those are the ones 2028 is designed
to remove.

## Sources

- Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 of 11 March 2025 amending Directive 2006/112/EC as regards VAT rules for the digital age: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL_202500516 — Article 17a end dates, the transfers of own goods scheme, extended OSS and Article 194 reverse charge
- Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1869 of 27 July 2026, OJ L, 28.7.2026: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL_202601869 — technical rules for the schemes; Articles 1 and 3 apply from 1 July 2028, Article 2 from 1 January 2027
- DG TAXUD — VAT in the Digital Age: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation/vat/vat-digital-age-vida_en
- DG TAXUD — VAT in the Digital Age: 2026 work programme, 22 May 2026: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/news/vat-digital-age-2026-work-programme-available-2026-05-22_en — sequencing of the three pillars to 2035