Cross-Border E-Commerce Questions About DEB Declaring: What Is It? And Do I Need To Declare It?
DEB is the French acronym for déclaration d’échange de biens. Most of companies ‘transactions within the Europe are carried out freely, without border controls and without the need to submit customs declarations. However, companies are required to submit monthly declarations to customs for all their transactions within the EU, which are known as DEB.
The DEB declaration summarizes the companies ‘transactions with companies based in the other EU countries, including import of goods into France and sales of goods or service to other EU countries. The purpose is to improve the monitoring of the flow of goods and the payment of VAT by EU customs, as well as to facilitate the collection of data on France’s trade with other EU countries and to improve the trade balance. This monthly DEB declaration is due on the tenth working day of the following month.
As long as you have shipped goods from France to other EU countries, you should declare DEB regardless of the value of your transactions. However, if your total annual sales within EU which do not exceed the threshold of €460.000, you can declare DEB by simply way, in which case, the information you need to provide is:
- Customs code for goods
- The value of the goods
- The method of sale
- The VAT number of the buyers in the countries of arrival of the goods
For imports into the France, the DEB declaration is required from the first month of the year if the value of the imported goods reached €460.000 in the previous year. If the value of the imported goods in the previous year was less than €460.000, but you have accumulated €460.000 since a certain month of the current year, the declaration is required from the month following the month in which the threshold value is exceeded.
