Talking about interesting tax tactics: the other day I got an email from an Indiegogo project saying &#x27;we ship directly from the EU, so EU customers don&#x27;t pay VAT.&#x27; At first I was like &#x27;huh?&#x27;, but after a while it turned out to be true: they are supposed to charge VAT only if they are selling from within the EU. They&#x27;re not, they&#x27;re a US company, collecting money through Indiegogo (not sure if Indiegogo is a reseller or not, but doesn&#x27;t matter for this case). So they don&#x27;t have to charge VAT to their customers. But VAT for foreign purchases is charged only by customs; if they ship from within the EU, no VAT. Meanwhile, if their EU production facility is a subsidiary of the US one (or of an umbrella concern), they can still both reclaim VAT they paid, plus they can shift profit offshore. No VAT paid anywhere (by anyone - not even the customers, so a 20% competitive advantage!), low corporate taxes if they choose so, it&#x27;s awesome.<p>So I wonder: why don&#x27;t more companies do this? I can see that for mass produced cheap trinkets the 20% would not be profitable vs how much cheaper it is to produce in China; but say for high-end furniture, manufactured in the EU. Why don&#x27;t they just &#x27;sell&#x27; from their online (US, or Hong Kong for all I care) shop which would give them a legal 20% advantage?