New obligations for ecommerce in germany

[heini]

Beginning with the new year all ecommerce sites under german legislation will have to adjust their pages to a new law.
All prices must clearly be shown as including VAT. Also additional costs from shipping must be noted along with each price tag.
Lots of work for all online salesmen here.

[jackofalltrades]

Thats interesting.

Are there any other changes being brought in?

Perhaps we will see a consolidation of regulations in the EU soon (with the recent Spanish changes too)?

It will help bring some consistency to ecommerce and hopefully encourage more people to buy! :)

JOAT

[vitaplease]

Heini,

thanks, any website/page with the official guidlines/announcement?

[heini]

Only found the full text of the revised regulation:
[transpatent.com...]

Here's an article on heise.de, which sums things up nicely:
[heise.de...]

[edited by: heini at 11:21 am (utc) on Dec. 31, 2002]

[vitaplease]

snippet from your last link:

..Artikel 5, Abs. 2 der europäischen E-Commerce-Richtlinie verlangt eine entsprechende Information bezüglich Steuern und Versandkosten in angezeigten Preisen. Mit der Änderung der Preisangabenverordnung ist denn auch diese Vorgabe der EU in deutsches Recht umgesetzt worden...

So this is already a European law/regulation?

[heini]

That's my understanding, Viatplease. It comes from the EU regulation, to which all countries have to adjust their national laws.

[Crazy_Fool]

yep, it's all part of EU law.
all web developers in the EU will need to be ready for a surge in enquiries to make sites compliant if governments start taking action to enforce compliance.

[heini]

I'm more concerned with the lawyers squeezing out a couple hundred or thousand bucks per site in a couple minutes working time.

[jakeblue]

Is this only for sites based IN Germany?

[Crazy_Fool]

not quite - the EU has decided the legal framework and each member country must implement it in their own law to take their other laws into account. therefore, each member country has similar laws with similar intent.