EU's ambassador to the US Guenter Burghardt today rallied against claims brought by software and anti-taxation groups.

EU's ambassador to the US Guenter Burghardt today rallied against claims brought by software and anti-taxation groups that the European Union's idea of charging the so-called VAT (value added tax) on business-to-consumer deliveries of digitized goods will hurt Internet-based sales of US services into the EU. Software makers and other US high-tech companies are fretting over the plan, which they say could hurt their European operations. Burghardt said that the US government, despite remarks from the Treasury Department that have appeared in several trade publications, which are critical of the report, has not officially approached the EU over the plan. A group of European Parliamentarians will visit Washington, D.C., next week, however, and may discuss the issue with US government officials. The rationale behind the plan, according to a statement from the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, is that all eligible products sold in the EU should be subject to the VAT, which, when it originally was devised, did not account for the then-non-existent Internet-based market. The VAT, which already is applied to all goods or services used in EU countries, would be applied to business-to-consumer transactions from non-EU businesses - including US companies - into the EU, requiring businesses that sell more than 100,000 Euros' worth (about $96,000) of goods in a year to register under the VAT system in Europe. The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) already has responded harshly to the plan, saying that it is unenforceable.