[TheAdminMarket]

Well there is a logic explanation for this. It's COMPETITION. They focus to prevent EU customers to buy from outside EU rather to collect VAT.

Let me give a real example. I'm locating in Greece and I want to rent a dedicated server for Web host. For the example purposes I found 2 companies offering the exact same features on the exact same price. eg $200/mo.

The first company is locating in UK so I've to pay $200 + 23% EU-EL Vat = $246/mo. The other company is locating is USA so as I don't have to pay VAT the total cost is $200/mo. This is the problem. This is why they count it as: Unfair competition for EU Companies.

The reason that they focus only in electronic delivery products and not in tangible is because tangible products are going throught the customs control when they come from non EU countries and the clients has to pay Tax instead Vat but in most cases this is the same. Actually sometimes Tax is higher than Vat.

@ozzy47
As for your comment " TBH I don't see how they are going to be able to enforce this on people living in the USA".

They'll do something very easy. They'll blacklist your domain from all European ISP. This mean that nobody from Europe will be able to access your site. That's why Microsoft and Google are paying any penalty that EU law assigns to them.

So if you don't mind if your site is not accessible from Europe then there is no reason to worry.

Last comment. I've search a lot to find how the companies will deliver the VAT that they'll collect and I find nothing. That's why I'm saying that they don't focus on collecting VAT but rather to prevent Europeans to buy from outside EU just as a way to avoid pay VAT. In simple words if you collect VAT you'll become more rich as you'll only collect without to deliver it

@HM666
"And you could charge a subscription fee for them to pay to get access but they are not paying for an item directly"

It also includes services, subscriptions etc. In general mean includes anything non tangible.

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Just found an article dated Dec 24th, 2014, so 3 days ago. Among the others it says:
"The change was made because EU wants to get more money from transactions for American companies – or to force them to move more operations to EU to get VAT reductions."

http://www.happybootstrapper.com/201...u-vat-changes/

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Well, you can try Googling and you'll find so many articles/questions for this issue. Try:
what happen if i do not collect eu vat for electronic sales