IIRC being below the 10.000 limit means you are allowed to charge the VAT from the EU country you are based, also for sales outside your country, I don't think it allows you to charge no VAT at all (that would probably be too easy to abuse)
Yes, but for small businesses that often means no VAT at all. For instance, the VAT registration threshold here in the UK is £85,000. Yet, until last month, you would have had to register for VAT even if you sold just pennies worth of (digital) goods into other EU countries.
I'm not quite sure how it affects US companies. There is no sales tax on exports from the US. So I think even if a US company would normally charge state level sales taxes on local sales, they would no longer have to charge VAT on any sales into the EU below 10,000. But I could easily be wrong on that.
