How much does IOSS registration cost in 2026?

QUICK ANSWER

There is no government fee for IOSS registration. Neither HMRC nor any EU tax authority charges to issue an IOSS number. What you pay for is an intermediary, which almost every business established outside the EU must appoint. Published rates in August 2026 run from around €20 a month at entry level, to €99–€400 to set up plus €50–€300 a month to file, with some providers adding a percentage of declared sales on top. But since 1 July 2026 the larger number is the EU’s new €3 customs duty, charged per item on low-value parcels and applied specifically to sellers registered for IOSS. For most sellers that duty now costs several times more than the compliance fee.

Every IOSS provider publishes a price. Almost none of them publishes the same price, and the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive is not marginal — it runs from under €20 a month to several hundred, before any volume charges. That is not because some providers are dishonest. It is because “IOSS registration cost” describes several separate things, charged by several separate parties.

Most guidance on this topic either skips the numbers or gives a range so wide it is useless. This guide separates the layers, names the four fee models the market actually uses, and shows what a full year costs at three realistic parcel volumes. It also covers the two changes that landed in 2026 — one in April, one in July — and the second of those is now the biggest line in most sellers’ EU cost base.

The short answer: where the money actually goes

There is no single IOSS registration fee. There is a stack of costs, and only some of them apply to you.

Table 1 — The six cost layers behind a single “IOSS registration” quote.

The first line is the one nobody selling IOSS services leads with: registration itself carries no government fee. Tax authorities do not charge to issue an IOSS number. Everything on your invoice goes to the party filing on your behalf — and, since July, to EU customs.

Why nobody can quote you one number

Three variables decide your bill, and every provider weights them differently.

• Where your business is established. This determines whether you legally need an intermediary at all — and the intermediary is the cost.
• Who files the monthly return. IOSS requires a return every month, including months where you make no sales at all. Someone has to prepare it.
• How the provider charges. Flat fee, per parcel, or a percentage of what you ship. At scale these produce wildly different annual totals.

Layer 1: the government charges no registration fee

This is worth stating plainly because it reframes the whole question. Whether you register in Ireland, Germany or through HMRC, the tax authority issues your IOSS number without charging for it. What you receive is a unique 12-digit IOSS VAT identification number beginning with IM.

Two different value limits apply, and they are separate figures rather than a conversion of one another. The EU scheme covers consignments with an intrinsic value not exceeding €150. The UK’s own VAT IOSS scheme, run by HMRC, uses a consignment value of £135 or less. In both cases the value excludes transport and insurance costs — unless those are built into the price and not shown separately on the invoice — and excludes other taxes and charges. The scheme cannot be used for excise goods such as alcohol and tobacco, or for sales to VAT-registered businesses.

What differs by country is whether you are allowed to register on your own.

EU-established businesses

If your business is established in an EU member state, you register directly with your own tax authority. No intermediary is required and no third party has to be paid. For these sellers, the compliance side of IOSS genuinely can cost nothing beyond the time it takes to file twelve returns a year.

Northern Ireland and Norway

Businesses in Northern Ireland, and in countries holding a VAT mutual assistance agreement with the EU, can also register directly. Norway is the practical example. HMRC’s guidance on who can register for the VAT Import One Stop Shop scheme sets out the eligibility test.

Great Britain, the US and everywhere else

Everyone else must appoint an intermediary. That includes Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales sit outside the EU and Northern Ireland for these purposes. HMRC states that businesses in countries outside the EU and Northern Ireland must ask an intermediary to register and act on their behalf if they choose to use the scheme. If you are a US or GB seller, this is where your cost begins.

Change one: intermediary registrations opened on 1 April 2026

HMRC opened registrations for intermediaries under the UK’s VAT Import One Stop Shop scheme on 1 April 2026. The ICAEW’s summary of the change confirms the position: from that date, businesses wanting to use the scheme can register through an intermediary, and those established outside the EU and Northern Ireland must do so.

There is a cost trap inside this that almost no coverage mentions. You can hold only one IOSS registration at a time. If you are already registered — directly with HMRC, or in an EU member state — and you now want to move to an intermediary, you have to cancel the existing registration first. IOSS cannot be backdated, so anything shipped in the gap between cancellation and the new number being issued falls outside the scheme. Plan the changeover around a quiet trading week, not a peak one. You will also have 28 days to complete the declaration form HMRC sends you; miss it and your intermediary has to start the registration again.

Acting as a UK intermediary is not trivial either. HMRC’s guidance for intermediaries requires them to be registered for UK VAT and to hold a business address in Northern Ireland. That requirement thins the market considerably, which is worth knowing when a quote looks unusually cheap.

Layer 2: the four intermediary pricing models

Providers charge in four ways. Most combine two or three of them, which is exactly why quotes are hard to compare.

The one-off registration fee

A setup charge covering document checks, anti-money laundering verification, and submitting the application to the tax authority. The market runs from €0 — several providers now fold registration into the monthly plan — to around €400. Ship24 lists €99 against a stated list price of €399. Industry commentary still quotes €200 to €500, which reads high against what is currently published.

The flat monthly filing fee

A fixed monthly charge for preparing and submitting your return. This is the most predictable model and, at volume, usually the cheapest. EAS publishes tiers from €19.90 a month for 15 orders up to €590 a month for 5,000, with registration included in every tier.

Per-parcel and per-order fees

Charged on orders above your plan’s allowance. These taper steeply with volume — from around €1.50 per extra order on entry plans down to about €0.11 on the largest. Predictable if your volume is stable; punishing if you have a seasonal spike.

A percentage of declared value

The model to look at hardest. A charge of 0.5% to 1% of everything you declare under IOSS sounds modest and is genuinely cheap at low volume. It scales with your revenue rather than with the work involved, so it becomes the most expensive option well before most sellers expect. One provider currently charges 1% on top of a monthly fee. Another markets specifically on not charging a percentage — which tells you how much of a live issue it is for buyers.

Table 2 — How each model behaves as you grow. The crossover point is explained below.

Layer 3: the costs that never appear on the quote

The headline fee is rarely the full bill. These are the lines that turn up later.

• Minimum contract terms. Twelve months is common. A €150 monthly fee on a twelve-month minimum is an €1,800 commitment, not a €150 decision.
• Onboarding and AML checks. Sometimes inside the setup fee, sometimes billed separately.
• Additional sales channels. Plans often cap the number of store integrations. Selling on Shopify, eBay and your own site can mean three charges.
• Amendment and correction fees. Charged when a filed return has to be revised — often because your data arrived late or in the wrong format.
• Exit and transfer fees. Payable when you move provider. Ask before you sign, not after.
• Record keeping. HMRC requires you to keep records of every eligible sale for 10 years, and to be able to send them electronically on request. That is a systems cost, not a filing cost.
• An EORI number. Separate from IOSS and frequently forgotten in the budget. Our guide to getting an EORI number in the UK covers the process.
• Currency conversion. You collect VAT in euros across 27 rates and settle in one currency. Spread and conversion charges are real money at volume.

What a full year of compliance costs: three sellers

Headline fees tell you almost nothing until you apply them to your own volume. Below, two published pricing structures are applied to three seller profiles. All figures are annual, in euros, using rates published in August 2026, and cover the compliance fee only — the customs duty comes next.

Table 3 — Twelve-month compliance costs. Illustrative, based on published list rates as at August 2026.

The pattern is the important part. Percentage pricing is cheapest while you are small and becomes the most expensive option quickly. On the numbers above, the crossover sits at roughly €28,000 of monthly IOSS sales — a 1,000-order month at a €28 average order value. Above that line, every additional euro of revenue costs you a cent in compliance fees for work that has not got any harder.

If you are close to that threshold, the number to model is not this month’s. It is next December’s.

Change two: the €3 duty that now dwarfs the fee

This is the part of the 2026 cost picture that most IOSS guidance has not caught up with, and it is far larger than anything discussed above.

On 12 December 2025 the Council of the EU agreed to levy a fixed customs duty of €3 on small parcels valued at less than €150 entering the EU, applying from 1 July 2026. Until then, consignments under €150 entered the EU free of customs duty. That relief is gone.

Three details matter for your budget:

• It is charged per item, not per parcel. The €3 applies to each distinct item in a consignment according to its tariff heading. A parcel containing one silk blouse and two wool blouses carries two tariff headings, and therefore €6 of duty.
• It targets IOSS-registered sellers specifically. The Council states the rate applies to goods for which non-EU sellers are registered in the IOSS — around 93% of all e-commerce flows into the EU. The Commission has said it will keep assessing whether to extend the rate to traders who are not IOSS-registered.
• It is temporary, but not short. The measure stays in place until the permanent arrangement removing the duty relief threshold takes effect, at which point all goods under €150 become liable at normal EU tariff rates.

The European Commission has since clarified that no VAT is due on the €3 duty itself in IOSS transactions, which is a small mercy. The arithmetic is not.

Table 4 — The €3 duty against the compliance fee, assuming a single tariff heading per parcel. Multi-item parcels cost more.

For a seller shipping 900 parcels a month, the intermediary bill is roughly €3,500 to €4,000 a year and the duty is €32,400. Arguing about whether your provider charges €79 or €99 a month is, at that point, the wrong conversation. The questions that matter are how many tariff headings you put in each parcel, whether consolidating orders reduces your duty lines, and whether your pricing has absorbed a per-item charge that did not exist in June.

It also changes the case for shipping above the threshold. Goods over €150 fall outside IOSS entirely and are dutiable at normal tariff rates, which for many product categories are lower than an effective €3 per item on a €14 order.

When IOSS costs you nothing at all

If every sale you make into the EU goes through an online marketplace, you almost certainly do not need your own IOSS number — and should not be paying for one.

HMRC is explicit: if you only sell low value goods through an online marketplace, the marketplace is responsible for reporting and paying any VAT due. Amazon, eBay and Etsy use their own IOSS numbers to do it, and if you are dispatching the goods you simply put the marketplace’s number on the customs declaration. Your compliance cost is zero.

That changes the moment your sales mix does. You need your own registration if you:

• Sell from your own website or a Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix or custom storefront
• Run a mixed model, where marketplace sales are covered but direct sales are not
• Ship consignments above €150 — those fall outside IOSS entirely, whoever sells them
• Hold stock inside the EU, which creates local VAT registration obligations regardless. Pan-European FBA is the common route into this.

One further distinction that catches people out: IOSS covers goods only. If you sell software, courses, subscriptions or other digital products, IOSS is not the scheme you need — see our guide to VAT for digital products and services.

The cost of not registering

Comparing IOSS fees against zero is the wrong comparison. Shipping into the EU without IOSS is not free — the cost moves from your compliance budget to your delivery experience, and it lands on the customer.

Table 5 — IOSS against the two alternatives. Carrier fees are published rates and vary by operator and destination.

Deutsche Post charges €6 including VAT to clear a postal consignment and collect the import charges from the recipient; DHL Express clearance events are commonly quoted at €15 to €20. National handling fees are appearing too — PostNL now applies €5 per item into the Netherlands, made up of the €3 EU duty and a €2 handling charge. At 900 parcels a month, a €6 clearance fee alone is €64,800 a year, paid by your customers, one annoyed doorstep at a time.

If you are weighing the alternatives, our customs, imports and exports service covers how DDP works in practice.

There is also a compliance cost to getting it wrong, and it is more severe than most sellers realise. You and your intermediary are jointly and severally liable for IOSS VAT debts from the date they begin representing you. If your intermediary misses a return or payment deadline for three consecutive periods, both of you are excluded from the scheme for a minimum of two years. Anyone excluded from OSS or IOSS cannot re-register for two years from the exclusion date, and the underlying VAT remains payable with penalties and interest on top. Tax authorities are not relying on what sellers declare, either — marketplace data now reaches them automatically under DAC7.

IOSS versus registering in 27 countries

The alternative to IOSS is not “nothing”. For a seller shipping low-value goods across the EU without it, the compliant route can mean local VAT registration in each country where liability arises. Registration and ongoing filing in a single member state typically costs more per year than an entire IOSS plan — and that is one country, not twenty-seven.

There is a second reason to look at this properly: IOSS’s scope is set to widen. Under ViDA, VAT liability shifts further onto sellers and platforms, and the deemed supplier regime expands. We cover the timeline in how ViDA and IOSS affect non-EU sellers. Anyone signing a long minimum term now should read it first.

If you hold stock in the EU or ship above €150 regularly, local VAT registration and filing sits alongside IOSS rather than instead of it — budget for both.

Ten questions to ask before you sign

Every one of these changes the final bill.

1.  Is the registration fee genuinely one-off, or does it recur annually?

2.  What is the minimum contract term, and what does it cost to leave early?

3.  How many orders does the monthly fee include, and what is the rate above that?

4.  Do you charge a percentage of declared value? If so, on gross or net?

5.  How many sales channels or store integrations are included?

6.  What do you charge to amend a return that has already been filed?

7.  Which member state will my IOSS number be issued by?

8.  You and I are jointly and severally liable — what is your filing record?

9.  How is my sales data collected: automatically, or do I send a spreadsheet?

10.  What happens to my registration if I switch provider?

Question eight matters more than it looks. Joint and several liability is not a formality — it is written into the declaration form you sign, and an intermediary’s compliance failure becomes your two-year exclusion.

How AVASK handles IOSS

Three things determine whether an IOSS arrangement is good value, and none of them is the headline fee.

• Your data arrives automatically. Our platform connects natively to Amazon, Shopify, eBay and 20+ other channels, so the monthly return is built from your actual transaction data rather than a spreadsheet you have to prepare. Amendment fees mostly exist because data arrives late or malformed — this is how you avoid them. See how the platform works.
• Registration, representation and filing sit in one place. AVASK provides direct and indirect representation to cover the IOSS requirement for companies not established in the EU, alongside handling the returns themselves. Our OSS and IOSS registration and filing service covers the full cycle, including the monthly filing deadlines you are working to.
• Your position is mapped before you buy. We map your VAT, IOSS and EPR obligations against where you actually sell and hold stock, within one business day and at no charge. If IOSS is not what you need — and for marketplace-only sellers it usually is not — we will tell you that.

420+ compliance specialists across 12 countries, covering 25 languages. If you sell into the UK and EU, our UK and EU compliance overview maps the full picture.

IOSS registration cost FAQs