Internet trade has been growing at a significant rate from year to year and represents an increasing share in total sales. The increasing availability and accessibility of communication links, new technologies and associated advanced content has led to the fact that Internet services, which until recently were reserved exclusively for large companies, are now used in small and medium enterprises and in the consumer segment. The growth of online commerce in the last 20 months has been further stimulated by the pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus, and a comparable growth is expected in the future. The continued growth of internet commerce is largely conditioned by the state's attitude towards it. Although e-commerce is naturally developed on the private initiative of entrepreneurs and in the vast majority of cases is beyond the immediate reach of the state, the degree of acceptance and use of electronic commerce depends largely on the confidence of entrepreneurs and consumers in the security of electronic transactions. The first step towards this was the adoption of the Electronic Business Development Strategy, which served as a basis for strengthening the confidence of entrepreneurs and consumers in the security of transactions using electronic media. The prevalence of e-commerce in Croatia is lower than the world average, but by changing people's perception that e-commerce saves time and money, in the absence of greater risk, the percentage of citizens who actively use e-commerce in Croatia will begin to approach the world average. The paper describes the development, basic features and specifics of internet commerce, the procedure of value added tax in the sale of goods at a distance and the harmonization of taxation within the European Union.