VAT registration thresholds in different countries

VAT Registration Thresholds. Which limits are there for VAT registration in different countries? When must I VAT-register a company in the UK? When does the company need to be registered for VAT in Germany? Which country has the highest VAT registration threshold?
[Read about VAT registration thresholds in Swedish instead]

Which country has the highest VAT registration threshold?

Singapore, which in many studies can be found at the top of the hill when it comes to business friendliness, has an almost unbelievably high VAT registration limit of the equivalent of 600000 Euro.

Other small business-friendly countries are the UK, Russia and Switzerland, all of which allow small business owners to grow without interference from bureaucratic red tape until they reach about 1 million in turnover. Other exemplary countries which deserve praise for allowing small businesses to avoid tax hassles during the start-up year(s) are Italy, Australia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, and Thailand.

Table with VAT registration thresholds

Here you can see the different thresholds for VAT registration in different countries around the world. EU pretends to have a single common market but still has incredibly different limits for VAT registration, which means that the conditions for small businesses around Europe are very different. A small business owner from the UK, Italy or Romania, which doesn’t have to be registered for VAT, can hold much lower prices on the very international market of today because they do not have to sell with VAT. If you own a business in Sweden, Spain or Netherlands and sell internationally and/or on the net your prices will be much higher than your competitors. Here in the table, you can see the VAT registration limits of Europe and some selected countries around the world:

Malta and Spain extinguish themselves with nil or zero VAT registration threshold, closely followed by Netherlands and Sweden. This is bad for small business growth, which in turn is bad for job creation since most new jobs are produced in small companies these days. The Swedish Tax Authorities even proposed a lower limit for registration of 90000 SEK some years ago, but politicians rejected it because of fear of losing tax income. They didn’t understand the value of the lost jobs that were never created.. and the tax income from those companies and the people they would have employed..