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Where Taxpayers and Advisers Meet

VAT registration when selling to the EU

halliJee
Posts:1
Joined:Sun Feb 03, 2019 1:45 am
VAT registration when selling to the EU

Postby halliJee » Sun Feb 03, 2019 2:05 am

Hi all,

I hope this is in the right forum. It was a toss up between here and the international forum :)

I sell products online and have recently been stumped with one VAT/EU question in particular.

I sell products online in the UK (I am a UK resident and British citizen) and am not VAT registered. I am nowhere near to the threashold for mandatory registration and am highly unlikely to be any time soon.

I sell on Amazon in the UK. I send stock to Amazon and they dispatch it for me when there is a sale, as part of their Prime programme. I have recently been looking at Amazon's systems (they have a few different ones) for selling to EU countries. There is PAN-EU, but this means that stock is stored in multiple EU countries (so that they can offer next day delivery in these countries, e.g. Germany, France Italy etc). The problem with this is that as soon as you store stock in any of these countries, you immediately have to register for VAT there. This would mean registering for VAT and submitting VAT returns in lots of EU countries and the size of my business at the moment just doesn't justify that type of commitment!

The other option that I'm looking at is EFN. This means that the stock is all stored in the UK and when an order is made from an EU country, e.g. Germany, Amazon will deliver it to Germany for me. As this option means that no stock is stored in any EU countries other than my home country, I do not have to register for VAT in these countries (I know I would have to if my sales in any of the EU countries exceeded that country's distance-selling threshold, but it's unlikely that I would be near any of these thresholds so for now i'm not even concerned with that!)...

...however, this is where I am getting conflicting information. If i use the EFN priogramme (only storing stock in the UK and then delivering abroad for specific orders, no stock generally stored in other EU countries), do I need to be VAT registered in the UK?

It doesn't seem logical that I would have to be, but I have scoured the internet for an answer to this and haven't got one, but have come across all sorts of conflicting advice in this area! Many resources say that the benefit of EFN over PAN-EU is that "you only have to be VAT registered in one country, rather than in many", which hints that i do have to be registered in the UK. However, I'm not sure if they just assume that I would likely be VAT registered in the UK anyway, so they're saying that as an assumption?! Or do I actually HAVE to be registered in the UK to sell in the EU, even though I: 1) am well under the UK threshold for mandatory registration, 2) Do not store stock in any country other than the UK, and 3) (not fullt related, but), I won't be hitting any of the distance-selling thresholds for the EU countries that I sell in.

Wow, i've written a novel here, sorry :D I just wanted to be super clear as I know it's a bit of a complicated one, especially for anyone not comfortable with Amazon's systems!

If anyone could help me, it honestly would be so, so appreciated!

Best wishes, and thanks for reading all the way to the bottom :D :D,

Sam.

les35
Posts:635
Joined:Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:09 pm

Re: VAT registration when selling to the EU

Postby les35 » Mon Feb 04, 2019 11:43 am

My view is that by using the EFN programme you will not be liable to be registered for VAT in the UK. But do note that sales into the EU do count towards your UK VAT registration threshold.
Do ask


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