Translated by AIVersione italiana
Key points
- The boom in small parcels
- Three regimes
- An increasingly popular scheme
Five years ago, in July 2021, the European Union replaced the country-by-country VAT registration requirement with a single digital portal for cross-border sales to consumers. The report published by the European Commission for 2025 assesses the outcome of that change: €38.8 billion in VAT declared during the year through the three single-window schemes, 17 per cent more than the €33.1 billion recorded in 2024.
The boom in small parcels
The growth is being driven by the Import One Stop Shop (IOSS), the channel dedicated to imports of goods worth less than 150 euros from non-EU countries: 7.7 billion euros, up 22 per cent on the previous year. Behind that figure lies a trend that customs authorities have been tracking for some time: in 2025, in Italia, 98.5 per cent of small parcels arriving from non-EU countries came from China, according to data from the Customs and Monopolies Agency – a concentration even more pronounced than the European average, which stands at around 91 per cent.
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Three regimes
The one-stop shop comprises three schemes. The Union scheme applies to businesses established in the EU that sell goods and services to consumers in other Member States: in 2025, it generated 27.9 billion, compared with 24 in 2024. The Non-Union scheme covers B2C services provided by non-EU operators without a permanent establishment in the EU: 3.2 billion, compared with 2.8. Finally, IOSS is the scheme for low-value imports: 7.7 billion, compared with 6.3. All three were introduced as an extension of the Mini One Stop Shop (MOSS), the scheme which, since 2015, has simplified VAT on digital services alone.
An increasingly popular regime
The five-year trend confirms this trajectory. In the second half of 2021 – the only period in which the scheme was in force that year – VAT declaredby 19.5 billion in 2022, 26.3 in 2023, 33.1 in 2024 and 38.8 in 2025. The cumulative total from 2021 to 2025 exceeds 125 billion euros
The number of businesses opting for the one-stop shop is also rising: 193,000 registered operators as at 31 December 2025, 12 per cent more than in 2024. The majority remain in the Union scheme (173,630 businesses, +13 per cent), whilst IOSS has 13,733 registered operators (+7 per cent) and 1,394 intermediaries (+3 per cent), the role of those acting on behalf of non-EU suppliers without a permanent establishment in the EU.
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