11.8 Selling Digital Content in the EU: VAT, Invoicing, Withdrawal Right

Everything so far in this part governs what you make. This chapter governs what happens when somebody pays you for it, which is the moment a persona business stops being a project and starts having filings.

The scope here is the product this book's roadmap plans: an ebook or other electronically supplied digital content, sold to consumers in the EU by a Polish company. The rules generalize to templates, prompt packs, and memberships. They do not cover physical goods, and they do not cover the US — where sales tax on digital goods is a state-by-state question that needs its own answer before you sell there.

As with 11.7: this is a map of what to bring to an accountant, not a substitute for one.

The decision that determines everything else: who is the seller

There are two ways to take money for digital content in the EU, and they differ in how much administrative work you own.

You are the merchant. A hosted PayPal payment link, a Stripe checkout on your own site, a bank transfer — you are the seller of record. You are responsible for determining the VAT rate of each customer's country, collecting it, filing returns, and issuing compliant invoices. Everything below applies to you in full.

A sells on your behalf. Platforms such as Lemon Squeezy or Paddle act as the seller of record: they collect the payment, determine and remit the VAT, issue the invoice in their name, and handle refunds. You receive a payout and a report. You do not register for in each market, and you do not issue the consumer invoice.

That is the real difference. The headline commission is not the deciding number — being your own merchant means owning VAT registrations, a rate table, invoice compliance, and the consumer-law duties in this chapter. Chapter 11's roadmap decision (the C-series) lists this as an open item, and the honest summary is: a payment link is cheaper and a merchant of record is simpler. Pick based on whether you want to file returns.

VAT on digital content sold to consumers

Digital content delivered electronically is an electronically supplied service, and for a consumer buyer the place of taxation is wherever the customer is, not where you are. So a German buyer pays German VAT, a Spanish buyer Spanish VAT, and the rate is whatever that country applies to e-publications.

The €10,000 threshold. If your total cross-border B2C sales of such services stay under €10,000 per year, you may apply your domestic VAT and skip the destination rules. Cross it, and destination VAT applies to every EU sale. [AS OF 2026-10]

VAT OSS. Once destination VAT applies, you do not register in twenty-seven countries. The One Stop Shop procedure lets you register once — in Poland, through the Polish tax administration — file one quarterly return covering all EU B2C digital sales, and make one payment. If you sell into the EU from outside it, the non-Union scheme is the equivalent route.

The Polish rate on e-publications. Poland applies a reduced rate to electronic publications matching the treatment of printed books — 5% at the time of writing, against the 23% standard rate. [AS OF 2026-10] This is the rate that applies if you are under the threshold or selling domestically; across the border, the customer's country rate governs, and several member states apply their own reduced rate to e-books.

The order in which this bites. Under €10,000: Polish VAT, 5%, no OSS. Over it: destination rates, VAT OSS, quarterly filing. The threshold is measured on cross-border B2C digital sales only, which matters if you also sell something else.

Invoicing

Three obligations, in increasing order of how much they surprise people.

An invoice on request. For a B2C sale you issue a receipt by default, and a full invoice when the customer asks. The invoice must carry your company details, the customer's details where known, the date, a sequential number, the item, the net amount, the VAT rate and amount, and the total. Every EU country has its own requirements for the fields in between, which is why the merchant-of-record option is attractive.

Filing and numbering. Sequential numbering with no gaps, retained for the statutory period, in a form you can produce on request. Your ebook platform's export is not automatically a compliant invoice register.

E-invoicing. Poland's national e-invoicing system, KSeF, is mandatory as of 2026: from 1 February 2026 for the largest taxpayers and from 1 April 2026 for everyone else. [AS OF 2026-10] Whether your consumer invoices fall inside the KSeF obligation, and how the system handles a consumer who cannot receive a structured invoice, is a question to settle with your accountant before your first sale, because retrofitting an invoicing afterward is expensive. The single most useful thing you can do this week is send one email asking exactly that question.

The withdrawal right, and why your ebook is normally non-refundable

EU consumers have a 14-day right of withdrawal from distance contracts. Digital content is the standard exception, and the exception has conditions that are entirely in your control.

The rule. There is no right of withdrawal for digital content supplied on a non-tangible medium once supply has begun, if three things are true:

The consumer gave prior express consent to begin performance during the withdrawal period.
The consumer acknowledged that this means losing the right of withdrawal.
You provided confirmation of that consent and acknowledgment on a durable medium — in practice, an email.

Miss any of the three and the consumer keeps a 14-day refund right on a file they have already downloaded.

What this looks like at checkout. An unticked checkbox with wording that names both elements: that you begin delivering immediately, and that the right of withdrawal is lost. Not a clause in the terms of service. Not a line in the footer. An affirmative action from the buyer, recorded with a timestamp.

Then send the confirmation email. It has to state the consent and the acknowledgment, and it is your evidence. Automate it as part of delivery, and log it in the register from 11.4.

This is also the answer to the most common support question of an ebook business: "can I get a refund?" You can offer refunds commercially, and many operators do, for goodwill. The point of this section is that you are not legally required to — provided you built the consent flow correctly.

The pre-contractual information duties

Before the consumer pays, you must provide, clearly and understandably: your identity and contact details, the main characteristics of the content, the total price including VAT, the arrangements for payment and delivery, the complaint-handling procedure, the existence or absence of the with the conditions attached to it, the duration of the contract where relevant, and — specific to digital content — its functionality and interoperability, meaning what it works on and what it needs. If you sell an EPUB, say so and say which readers open it. A PDF, likewise.

Two adjacent obligations from the 2022 consumer-law modernization that apply to how you price and present:

Discounts must show the lowest price in the 30 days before the reduction. A struck-through "was €49" that was never charged is a violation.
Fake reviews are prohibited, and the penalties in Poland reach a percentage of turnover. Generated testimonials for your ebook are the same violation as purchased ones.

The stack, as a checklist

Before the first sale of the English edition:

[ ] Merchant-of-record decision made and written into the roadmap
[ ] VAT path chosen: under €10,000 domestic rate, or VAT OSS registration
[ ] Invoice register, numbering, and the KSeF question answered in writing by an accountant
[ ] Checkout consent checkbox with both withdrawal elements, unticked by default
[ ] Confirmation email covering the consent, the acknowledgment, and delivery
[ ] Pre-contractual information page including functionality and interoperability
[ ] Terms of sale, privacy notice (11.7), and a complaint procedure with a real address
[ ] Refund policy stated, whether commercial or the statutory default
[ ] Consent and invoice records in the register, with retention periods

Nine items. Six of them are a weekend, two need an accountant, and one is a decision the roadmap already flags.

Where this goes wrong

Treating a PayPal link as a merchant of record. It is a payment method. The VAT obligation is still yours.

Assuming the platform's checkout handles consumer law. It handles payment, and sometimes VAT. The consent flow, the information duties, and the confirmation email are the seller's.

Burying the withdrawal consent in the terms. It has to be an affirmative act, and you have to be able to prove it.

Forgetting the confirmation email. Without it, the 14-day right survives on a downloaded file.

Discovering KSeF after your first hundred invoices. Ask the question first.

A discount price that was never charged. The 30-day lowest-price rule is enforced, and the penalty is levied as a percentage of turnover.

Selling into the US without checking state sales tax. Different regime, different answer, and it is not covered here.

The gate

Who is the seller of record for your first sale?
Which VAT path applies, and what is your cross-border B2C total?
Where is the withdrawal consent captured, and where is the confirmation sent from?
Can you produce a compliant invoice for a German customer on request?
Who answered the KSeF question, and when?

What you leave with

The merchant-versus-merchant-of-record decision and what it actually costs in admin, the VAT path with its threshold and the OSS route past it, the invoicing obligations including the e-invoicing question to ask now, the three conditions that make digital content non-refundable, the pre-contractual information list, and a nine-item checklist that stands between you and your first compliant sale.

That closes Part XI. Everything in it was about staying lawful and worth following. Part XII is about the part nobody writes down: how to run this for years without burning out, losing the identity to a vendor change, or discovering in month eight that the business never had a funnel.