| General > General Technical Chat |
| UK abolishes <£15 VAT free imports. EU to follow. |
| << < (23/31) > >> |
| MK14:
--- Quote from: Someone on January 22, 2021, 02:15:19 am ---Gotta love their answers in the press about this which always comes back to the doublespeak "we pay exactly the amount of taxes that we have to". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement Completely indecipherable to the general public. --- End quote --- As I see it, someone in the UK earns (probably applies to most countries), £20,000 a year, and pays a ball park figure of £5,000 a year in taxes. A small business earns £200,000 a year, and pays a ballpark figure of £50,000 a year in taxes. A huge PLC company in the UK, earns £20 Billion a year, and SHOULD have paid a ballpark figure of £5 Billion a year, in taxes. But instead pays a team of expert tax avoidance tax accountants, £10,000,000 pounds a year, implements some tax heavens (like you linked to), and other changes to how they account for their earnings/profits/losses etc. Hence paying only £50 million in taxes, instead of the ballpark £5 billion, they should have been paying. Legal: Yes. Morally acceptable, fair and good for society: Maybe not. |
| SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: MK14 on January 21, 2021, 11:35:03 pm --- --- Quote from: IanB on January 21, 2021, 10:14:54 pm ---It looks like a complete mess to me. I foresee it being very difficult to buy things from overseas and have them shipped to the UK in the future. Many foreign sellers will decide it's not worth doing the paperwork to comply with the rules. --- End quote --- On a more serious note. I agree with you, completely. I've sort of mentally resigned myself, to probably not buying much, from international markets, such as China. At least until this current situation (VAT/paperwork, not Covid), settles down and hopefully get resolved. I'm a bit annoyed the international supplier is given the duty (ignore pun) of documenting/collecting the VAT and maybe the duties. I suspect this new policy (which seems to really come from the EU, rather than the UK, I suspect). Will back-fire. They want huge amounts of paper work to be filled in, because someone buys a £0.99 pack of small electronics from a small Chinese seller, who is making pennies, or not much more, on each sale. Maybe what would have been much more sensible, is to make the imports completely free of VAT and duties, as long as below some big number, such as £1,000. But, introduce a new paypal/payments-system, charge of some sensible percentage, such as 7.5% of the paypal total costs. If it is outside of the UK (or EU, depending on where you are). Then it would be really easy for everyone. No paper work or anything. Getting the foreign sellers to have to do stuff like paperwork, for the EU/UK tax affairs, on low value items, such as £0.99 is probably not the best of choices. I suspect. --- End quote --- Isn't the real solution what they are already doing: requiring eBay and the like to collect the VAT? |
| IanB:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on January 22, 2021, 04:56:13 pm ---Isn't the real solution what they are already doing: requiring eBay and the like to collect the VAT? --- End quote --- It's the wrong end of the supply chain. There's a 100+ countries in the world, and every seller in every one of 100+ countries is supposed to open an account with the revenue agencies of 100+ other countries, calculate and collect one of 100+ correct tax amounts depending on the customer's address, and then remit the proceeds to 100+ agencies afterwards? It's nonsense. Revenue should be collected when the goods are received, not when they are dispatched. If someone sends you a package from China where VAT is owed, you should simply have to go to your local Post Office, pay the VAT over the counter, and collect your package. |
| SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: IanB on January 22, 2021, 06:49:25 pm --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on January 22, 2021, 04:56:13 pm ---Isn't the real solution what they are already doing: requiring eBay and the like to collect the VAT? --- End quote --- It's the wrong end of the supply chain. There's a 100+ countries in the world, and every seller in every one of 100+ countries is supposed to open an account with the revenue agencies of 100+ other countries, calculate and collect one of 100+ correct tax amounts depending on the customer's address, and then remit the proceeds to 100+ agencies afterwards? It's nonsense. Revenue should be collected when the goods are received, not when they are dispatched. If someone sends you a package from China where VAT is owed, you should simply have to go to your local Post Office, pay the VAT over the counter, and collect your package. --- End quote --- But that's exactly what eBay does - they collect from the buyer, when they buy (and give the money to the country that the buyer lives in). The buyer and seller don't have to worry about anything other than Customs and Shipping if the transaction is done through eBay. An obvious improvement could be if eBay also collected Customs charges on behalf of the country the buyer is in... that way, nobody has to worry about anything, the price plus shipping gets clearly defined up front, everybody happy? |
| Nauris:
--- Quote from: MK14 on January 21, 2021, 11:35:03 pm --- I suspect this new policy (which seems to really come from the EU, rather than the UK, I suspect). Will back-fire. They want huge amounts of paper work to be filled in, because someone buys a £0.99 pack of small electronics from a small Chinese seller, who is making pennies, or not much more, on each sale. ... Getting the foreign sellers to have to do stuff like paperwork, for the EU/UK tax affairs, on low value items, such as £0.99 is probably not the best of choices. I suspect. --- End quote --- I took some time and read some EU papers and this is totally different than how EU intends to do this. EU legislation works like this (from June 2021) : 1. It is an OPTION for non-EU seller/marketplace to register for IOSS scheme to prepay VAT. (needs tax representative in EU) It is very clearly stated that this is not mandatory. 2. Post/Courier collects it (and charges an fee) 3. Regular way (at the customs) So basically you can collect VAT and then your products don't need to wait at customs -> fast delivery, happy customer. But if you don't want to bother that is fine also but then your customer needs to wait more and pay the handling fee. I think it is rather good approach. Ebay, Amazon etc with big volumes will surely register to make shopping easier but smaller outfits can just leave it to the post/courier like before. https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/vatecommerceexplanatory_28102020_en.pdf |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |