Buying services online from a different country?

darkan9el

Hi all, I have my curious head on and I noticed today, when buying a service (VPN) that they offer different countries, some of these countries do not have VAT and I wondered what is the legalities of buying from a country that doesn't not have VAT when you reside in a country that does have VAT.

1. If I live in France and select France as the country I would be charged 20% VAT
2. If I live in France and select Fiji as the country I would be charged 0% VAT

Can I make the latter purchase '2' and what are the implications for doing so?

csgohan4

Are you advocating committing fraud to save on VAT? That will not be endorsed on here I'm afraid.

Do what you think is best for you.

But do you not think it would be odd when paying with a card that has no links to Fiji? nor Fiji billing address?

darkan9el

Why do people automatically think a question implies intent?

I was just curious, when you use VPN, the country you are routing through is the country that will, in such instances, be automatically applied in form fields such as the one I am alluding to, so, it would be easy to miss this and click on continue to payment through such as PayPal and assume the transaction would go through as France. I think the country option is as much to do with currency selection, as it is showing VAT rates.

As for fraud, the banks do a bang up job on that score already.