Pay environmental tax or stop selling on eBay Germany

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The German Packaging Act (VerpackG) and your Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) come into effect soon and eBay are reminding sellers that you’ll need to sign up to pay the environmental tax or stop selling on eBay Germany.

To comply with the Packaging Act you’ll need to license your packaging with a dual system and register with the LUCID packaging register. eBay have partnered with Lizenzero to help you make the changes that are required. 

eBay has a legal obligation to make sure that its commercial sellers are compliant with these regulations by 1 July 2022. If you do not take the necessary steps by the deadline, we will be legally required to restrict your selling privileges for the German market.

– eBay

Lizenzero offers a straightforward way to license your packaging digitally using the Interseroh+ system. If you are a professional seller and put packaging (product or shipping) materials into Germany you’ll need to sign up. For low volumes of paper or card, the environmental tax could cost you as little as €39 a year, but beware of plastics – that’ll start to bump up the total you are obliged to pay so avoid using poly bags if you can.

Lizenzero have a calculator on their site which will let you know the cost to your business- as an example up to 50kg of paper and card will keep you in the minimum €39 environmental tax bracket but anything over 1kg of plastic will start to substantially raise your costs.

Sellers will need to make a decision based on their sales volume as to whether it is worth continuing to sell into Germany (similarly with France where the environmental tax came in on the 1st of January this year). For anyone with reasonable volumes the €39 will be minimal and worth paying to continue trading but also consider the materials you use and how to keep the cost as low as possible.

Register my packaging with LUCID

Firstly, you’ll need to provide the Central Agency Packaging Register with:

  • Your company name, address and contact details
  • Your VAT / Tax ID
  • A declaration that your packaging is licensed with a dual system

You will then receive your EPR number. Enter this along with the amount of packaging you are using when you open an account with a dual system. eBay’s partner Lizenzero lets you open an account without the number, but it should be provided as soon as possible. 

7 Responses

  1. Am I right in thinking that if you just list on Ebay UK but a German buys something, the item can still be sent without this palava?

  2. This isn’t just ebay or Germany. It will apply shortly to France from 1/1/2023, I believe.
    Amazon has already said they will be doing the same as ebay and Fruggo and all other major market places will have to follow suit.
    I assume that every EU / European country will soon also have their hand out for this extra money.

    I have read so many posts about people that just won’t sell to those countries, so it will be interesting to see.

    It’s not just the tax / fees that will be collected by the country, it’s the charges from these companies that are “urging” people to use their services to file these reports. The last figures I saw were from 150-300 euros PER country + the tax / fee to the country for your plastic/waste.

    The ridiculous thing is that these reports to these agencies are not linked to the market places.
    On amazon you can generate a report. You download it. As a 3rd party seller, Amazon has NO idea how you package your items. So you have to manually adjust the report to show what you generate and then upload to whatever “joker” or agency you choose.

    What I am not sure of is whether you HAVE to sign up with one of these companies to file the waste information on your behalf or if you just need to sign up to Lucid and then you can file the information your self.

    The last bit of information that requires clarification was on one of the QnA’s that I saw. If you sell items in their ORIGINAL packaging, so you don’t produce further waste, are you then exempt from paying these taxes. The QnA showed the answer as “NO” you do not need to pay taxes. I am sure it will be something that, like leaving the EU and IOSS, will be butchered and get sorted out over the next year or two!

  3. “The Central Agency Packing Register” sounds like some sort of CIA or FBI operation. Absolute tosh, money for old rope, typical EU bureaucratic nonsense. It’s fine, I will sell elsewhere. What with delivery problems, VAT problems, customs operatives that are unable to read tariff codes and general chaos, selling to the EU is becoming less attractive by the minute.

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