PSA to EU devs: adjust your Google Play app pricing to account for new VAT rules
If you don’t remember, a while back Google made a change to the Google Play developers’ policy to account for new rules in VAT transactions for folks in the European Union. The change effectively automatically offloads the VAT (or “value-added tax,” the standard tax system for members of the European Union) onto the listed price of the app, so instead of it being tacked onto the end of a transaction that the user pays for, it’s being taken from the app’s base price.
Well, that change went into effect the moment the calender turned to 2015, so we thought it’d be good to remind you to set your apps’ pricing accordingly. Google Play’s developer dashboard allows you to set pricing by each region and country, so you can take a look at each country’s VAT rate (varies up to 25% depending on country) and add the appropriate amount accordingly. Without doing so, you’ll basically be paying someone else’s sales tax, and with all the income tax you already have to deal with we’re sure that wouldn’t be thrilling.
It’s a tall order for those who command a lot of apps, but one that should be done if you don’t want to lose out on extra revenue that might be lost because of this move. It sucks that Google had to make this change, but they did and you should at least be grateful there’s a way to circumvent it with just a bit more legwork on your behalf. At least you’ll have a nice long weekend to get it done.
[Thanks, Jeff!]