VAT OSS for an Online Store — How to File in 2026

Selling from Poland to customers in other EU countries and not sure when to start paying VAT there? This guide explains the EUR 10,000 threshold, registration, and settling under the OSS procedure step by step.

What VAT OSS Is and When You Actually Need It

VAT OSS (One Stop Shop) is an EU procedure that lets you account for VAT on sales to consumers in other EU countries in a single quarterly return filed in Poland — instead of registering for VAT separately in every country you ship parcels to. It applies primarily to intra-Community distance sales of goods (WSTO), that is, shipping goods to a private customer (B2C) in another member state, as well as to certain electronic, telecommunications, and broadcasting services (TBE).

The shortest answer to the question ‘when OSS?’: you start caring about it the moment your total B2C sales to all EU countries exceed EUR 10,000 (PLN 42,000) net in a year. Up to that threshold, you can charge Polish VAT just as you would on ordinary domestic sales. Once you cross it, you’re required to tax the sale at the VAT rate of the customer’s country — and this is exactly where OSS makes life easier, because it lets you avoid registering for tax abroad.

In short: OSS is not a new tax. It’s a way to pay foreign VAT without foreign registrations and foreign accountants.

Before we get into the details, one caveat: this text is educational in nature. Always confirm your specific accounting with an accountant or tax advisor, because the devil is in the details of your sales structure.

Who does this affect in practice? Above all, growing stores that have started shipping parcels abroad — sometimes deliberately, through foreign marketplace accounts, and sometimes almost ‘by the way,’ when foreign buyers found the listing on their own. It’s precisely this second group that most often crosses the threshold without realizing it: a few orders from Germany, a few from the Czech Republic, a few from France, and after a year the total comfortably tops PLN 42,000. That’s why it’s worth turning on monitoring of your foreign sales before it grows to a level that forces quick decisions under deadline pressure.

The EUR 10,000 (PLN 42,000) Threshold — How to Count It Correctly

This is the most common source of errors, so remember four rules:

• For the entire EU combined, not per country. You don’t count a separate limit for Germany, the Czech Republic, and France. You add up all your WSTO sales to all EU countries together.
• Net amount. You count the PLN 42,000 threshold without VAT.
• Goods (WSTO) plus TBE services. The limit also includes electronic, telecommunications, and broadcasting services provided to consumers in the EU — not just shipments of goods.
• Current and previous year. If you exceeded the threshold in the previous calendar year, in the current year you tax sales in the customer’s country from the very first transaction — the limit doesn’t ‘reset’ in your favor.

Importantly, PLN 42,000 is the statutory equivalent of the EUR 10,000 threshold — Polish law states the amount directly in złoty, so you don’t convert it yourself at the current exchange rate. It’s one fixed number that you monitor throughout the year.

In this example, no single country ‘looks like’ it exceeds the limit, but the total of PLN 45,000 breaks through the PLN 42,000 threshold. From the transaction that caused the excess (including that transaction), you have to charge the VAT of the customer’s country — meaning that, in practice, this is the moment you decide to register for OSS.

What You Do NOT Count Toward the Threshold

• Domestic sales — to customers in Poland.
• B2B sales to a company with a valid EU VAT number — that’s an intra-Community supply of goods (WDT), accounted for separately.
• Sales shipped from a warehouse abroad — e.g., from an Amazon warehouse in Germany to a German customer. This isn’t WSTO within the meaning of OSS and usually requires local VAT registration. We cover foreign logistics in more detail in our guide to selling on Amazon.

You’ve Crossed the Threshold — You Have Two Paths

Once you exceed PLN 42,000, you have to pay foreign VAT one way or another. The choice concerns only the form of settlement:

For most stores shipping parcels from Poland, OSS is by far simpler — one return instead of several foreign registrations. Note: OSS is an ‘all or nothing’ solution within WSTO. You can’t account for some countries in OSS and skip others — if you choose the procedure, it covers all of your B2C shipping sales to the EU.

Registering for OSS — the VIU-R Form

You register by filing the VIU-R form (‘Notification regarding the special EU procedure for accounting for VAT’) with the Head of the Second Tax Office Warszawa-Śródmieście — the only tax office competent for OSS in all of Poland, regardless of where your business is based. You can submit the notification electronically, including via the e-Tax Office (e-Urząd Skarbowy).

The deadline is crucial. If you cross the threshold during the year, you must register by the 10th day of the month following the month in which the threshold-crossing transaction took place. You can also register voluntarily, before you cross the threshold — in which case you charge the VAT of the customer’s country right away. This can pay off when you sell mainly to countries with a rate lower than Poland’s 23% and want uniform rules from the start of the year.

The VIU-DO Return and Payment — Quarterly, in Euros

You settle using the VIU-DO return (‘Declaration for accounting for VAT under the EU procedure’), filed quarterly. The deadline for filing the return and paying the tax falls on the last day of the month following the end of the quarter — and this deadline is not moved by a weekend or a holiday (this is an exception to the usual rule of shifting tax deadlines).

A few rules that are easy to forget:

• The currency is the euro. You complete the return and pay the tax in euros, even if the sale was in złoty or Czech koruna.
• The ECB rate from the last day of the quarter. You convert sales in other currencies into euros at the European Central Bank rate from the last day of the settlement period, and if no rate was published that day — from the next day.
• A nil return is mandatory. If there were no sales covered by OSS in a given quarter, you still file a ‘nil return.’
• Corrections are included in the current return (rather than amending the old one), no later than within 3 years of the deadline for the original return.

You pay the tax into a single account in Poland, and the national administration itself distributes the funds to the appropriate member states. Invoicing for WSTO settled under OSS is, as a rule, subject to the rules of the country of identification — for how invoicing is changing in the context of the new e-invoicing obligation, see our article on KSeF 2026 for e-commerce sellers.

OSS Records — You Keep Them for 10 Years

This is a requirement that surprises many sellers. You keep records of transactions settled under OSS for 10 years from the end of the year in which the transaction took place, and you make them available electronically at the request of the tax administration of any EU country, not just Poland’s. This is one reason why data on foreign sales has to be organized, not scattered across spreadsheets.

Minimum scope of records (checklist):

• country of consumption (the customer’s country),
• type and quantity of goods or a description of the service,
• date of delivery,
• the taxable base and currency,
• the VAT rate applied,
• the amount of VAT due and the payment date,
• any corrections.

In practice, this means you need a system that, for each order, stores the customer’s country and the correct VAT rate. Keeping such records by hand with several hundred parcels a month is asking for a mistake during an audit — especially when sales run in parallel through your store and several marketplaces.

Step by Step: What to Do as You Approach the Threshold

1. Monitor your total B2C sales to the EU cumulatively from the start of the year — net, all countries together, including TBE services.
2. Decide: OSS or local registrations. For shipping from Poland, in most cases you’ll choose OSS.
3. File the VIU-R with the Second Tax Office Warszawa-Śródmieście — no later than the 10th day of the month after the threshold-crossing transaction (or earlier, voluntarily).
4. Set the VAT rates of the customer’s country in your store and on marketplaces so that prices and settlements are consistent.
5. Keep records from the first transaction covered by the procedure.
6. File the VIU-DO every quarter and pay in euros — remembering nil returns too.

When OSS Isn’t Enough (or Doesn’t Apply)

• Goods in a warehouse abroad. A foreign fulfillment model — e.g., Amazon FBA with warehouses in Germany or the Czech Republic — creates local VAT obligations that OSS won’t replace; local registration is needed. This matters when planning multichannel selling.
• Import from outside the EU to the customer. Shipments from third countries with a value of up to EUR 150 are handled by a separate procedure, IOSS, not OSS.
• B2B sales. Supplies to companies with a valid EU VAT number are WDT — outside the OSS procedure.
• Domestic sales. You account for Polish VAT on sales in Poland normally in JPK_V7, not in OSS.

How to Avoid Mixing Up Rates and Data

The biggest practical challenge of OSS isn’t the return itself, but correctly assigning the VAT rate of the customer’s country to each order and gathering the data per country at the end of the quarter. Rates differ not only between countries (e.g., a standard 19% in Germany, 21% in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands — approximate; verify at the source before filing), but also per product category, because many countries have reduced rates for specific product groups.

That’s why it pays to have your multichannel sales data — from Allegro, your own store, and other marketplaces — flow into one place that organizes it by shipping country and net value. Multichannel selling panels, like the planned Nimo, are designed to keep this kind of data in a single view; always confirm the actual VAT OSS settlement with your accountant, though, because they’re the one who takes responsibility for the return.

Example: How Much Really Changes When You Cross the Threshold

Let’s show it in numbers. Suppose you sell a cosmetic for PLN 100 net. The rates below are approximate — before filing, check the current VAT rates in the customer’s country, because they do change and depend on the product category.

Practical takeaway: after crossing the threshold, when selling to countries with a rate lower than 23%, you can either keep the gross price and increase your margin, or slightly lower the price and be more competitive. This is exactly the moment to deliberately set prices per market, rather than just ‘copying over’ the Polish amounts. If you’re planning to expand into further EU markets — for example, by entering Kaufland Global Marketplace — an organized VAT-rate model will come in handy from day one.

The Most Common Seller Mistakes in OSS

• Counting the threshold separately for each country. The PLN 42,000 threshold is a single one, shared across all B2C sales to the EU — you don’t multiply it by the number of countries.
• Forgetting about TBE services. You also count electronic, telecommunications, and broadcasting services provided to consumers in the EU toward the threshold, not just shipments of goods.
• Continuing to charge Polish VAT after crossing the threshold. From the transaction that broke the limit, the customer’s country’s rate already applies — including that ‘borderline’ transaction.
• Skipping the nil return. No sales in a quarter doesn’t release you from the obligation to file the VIU-DO.
• Converting at the wrong exchange rate. In OSS, the ECB rate from the last day of the quarter applies, not the NBP rate you use in domestic settlements.
• No per-order records. Without the customer’s country and rate recorded for each transaction, you won’t be able to reconstruct the data for the return or pass an audit, which may come even years later.

Most of these mistakes come down to one thing: data on foreign sales must be collected systematically from the first transaction, not reconstructed in a rush the week before the filing deadline. The more sales channels you have, the more clearly this shows.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to register for OSS if I haven’t exceeded PLN 42,000?

There’s no such obligation — up to the EUR 10,000 (PLN 42,000) net threshold, counted jointly for the whole EU, you charge Polish VAT. However, you can register voluntarily, even before crossing the threshold, if that’s more convenient for you or you sell mainly to countries with a lower VAT rate.

By when do I have to file the VIU-DO return?

By the last day of the month following the quarter: for Q1 by April 30, for Q2 by July 31, for Q3 by October 31, for Q4 by January 31. The deadline doesn’t shift when it falls on a weekend or holiday, and you pay the tax in euros.

Do I issue an invoice and a receipt under OSS?

For WSTO settled under OSS, the documentation obligations essentially follow the rules of the country of identification, and what’s key is correct OSS records. It’s best to work out the details of documenting sales with your accountant, especially in the context of the e-invoicing changes described in our KSeF guide.

What if I sell through Amazon FBA with a warehouse abroad?

Keeping goods in a warehouse in another EU country (e.g., under FBA) usually creates a local VAT registration obligation there — OSS doesn’t replace it. In such a model, you often combine local registrations with OSS settlement for the remaining shipments from Poland.

Do I have to file a nil return as well?

Yes. If you’re registered for OSS and there were no sales covered by the procedure in a given quarter, you still file a nil return by the standard deadline. Skipping it is treated as failing to file a return.