Private customers in the EU: when you need the One-Stop-Shop

01The difference that matters

With a business customer in the EU the recipient owes the tax and you report the supply. With a private customer there is nobody to owe it for you — so the question becomes which country gets it.

The answer depends on the service, not on the customer. For some services it stays with Cyprus; for others it is the country where the customer lives.

Where the customer’s country taxes it, that country’s rate applies — not the Cyprus one. And that rate belongs in a maintained table, never in someone’s memory.

02The threshold

Below an annual limit you may keep taxing in Cyprus. Above it, tax goes to the country of destination — from the supply that crosses the limit, not from the following year.

We have checked this figure, but not against the Official Gazette. It appears here with the date we checked it. Before you act on it, ask your accountant.

The switch itself is the important part: it happens on a date, not in a software version. Cross the limit in October and you have two different treatments of the same service within one year — and both are right.

03What changed in 2025: live is not electronic

Since 1 January 2025 a service delivered by live stream or otherwise virtually is taxed, for a private customer, where that customer belongs. The change came through KDP 159/2025 in the Thirteenth Schedule to the Cyprus VAT Law.

A live online training session is therefore a destination case — even though it is not an electronically supplied service. Two different questions, and they get confused constantly.

A recorded course that runs automatically, by contrast, is an electronically supplied service and always was. The difference is whether a human being is doing something at the time.

04What the software needs for this

• A flag per service saying whether an EU private customer is taxed at destination — not whether the service is “electronic”.
• A date from which the registration applies. Cyprus before, destination after, and the switch lands on one day.
• A rate table per country and period, maintained from an official source.
• A watcher that adds up the year as it goes and speaks up before the limit is reached, not after.

The last point is the one missing in practice. Otherwise you notice the limit was crossed in March, going through last year’s pile — and by then it is retrospective.