71–80 of 118 posts
The barrier of running an EU B2C business is so high if you need to sell all over EU that most of the time it doesn't even make sense. It's a shame because if you're in the EU and you want to bootstrap a small B2C business you have no choice other than sticking to the country you're in.
VAT just sounds like a huge, overcomplicated mistake by the EU. Why do you guys continue to live with it instead of repealing or fixing it?
It's not easy by any means but neither would I call it a huge, overcomplicated mistake. Even the new rules for digital services are overdramatized – it's really just as simple as charging a different VAT rate per country and submitting a single quarterly VAT return for the entire EU. For most people, if their web store and accounting software doesn't already take care of this, it will soon enough. Also, every EU memb…
VATmoss has been disastrous for small online UK businesses.
UK businesses do not have to register for VAT until their turnover exceeds a figure (£80,000 odd).
with VATmoss: if they have any EU customers they must either VAT register in the UK (which adds 20% to their UK prices), OR register and fill out VAT returns for each member state they have customers in, which is not really feasible
I have simply stopped selling to EU customers... "single market", yeah right.
The EU commission's answer to this has been "we know this is a problem for small businesses. we'll sort it out when we discuss it in 2019"... not good enough.
all this bureaucracy was an attempt to try and get Amazon to pay their fair share of VAT... to hell with the small businesses
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It's not easy by any means but neither would I call it a huge, overcomplicated mistake. Even the new rules for digital services are overdramatized – it's really just as simple as charging a different VAT rate per country and submitting a single quarterly VAT return for the entire EU. For most people, if their web store and accounting software doesn't already take care of this, it will soon enough. Also, every EU memb…
the UK did not have VAT prior to joining the EU VATmoss has been disastrous for small online UK businesses. UK businesses do not have to register for VAT until their turnover exceeds a figure (£80,000 odd). with VATmoss: if they have any EU customers they must either VAT register in the UK (which adds 20% to their UK prices), OR register and fill out VAT returns for each member state they have customers in, which is…
While I'm sympathetic to the fact that this will increase your administrative burdens, in terms of your bottom line this really won't make much of a difference, because once you register for VAT you can also deduct it for all the costs you make – you only pay tax on the value you add, hence the name.
Thanks for the correction re: the UK not having VAT before joining the union, didn't know that.
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Well, corporate taxes and income taxes are already quite high in some countries (eg. Italy) and I'm not sure what other alternatives there are to VAT other than raising those two to compensate
I understand why there is a need for the variable rates, but the administration of it all sounds horrible. There should be a single source of truth for the rates data, and there should be an api instead of having to rely on a third party for that information.
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the UK did not have VAT prior to joining the EU VATmoss has been disastrous for small online UK businesses. UK businesses do not have to register for VAT until their turnover exceeds a figure (£80,000 odd). with VATmoss: if they have any EU customers they must either VAT register in the UK (which adds 20% to their UK prices), OR register and fill out VAT returns for each member state they have customers in, which is…
> if they have any EU customers they must either VAT register in the UK (which adds 20% to their UK prices) While I'm sympathetic to the fact that this will increase your administrative burdens, in terms of your bottom line this really won't make much of a difference, because once you register for VAT you can also deduct it for all the costs you make – you only pay tax on the value you add, hence the name. Thanks for…
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> So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? I must admit I'm not 100% sure either. I'm just exposing the API of the underlying open source project which says to supply the seller's country [1]. [1]: https://github.com/mpociot/vat-calculator At the bottom, where it says "Important"
If you're 'not sure' you should take this offline until you are sure. Bookkeeping is an extremely bad area to go 'move fast and break stuff' because what you're breaking is other people's administrations and you won't have a way to fix it or even to reach them to inform them of an issue.
"I calculated the VAT for the products I'm selling using that one website" is just too much of a liability risk for a business to take. Who do you hold liable in the event that the calculation was wrong?
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There are variable rates almost everywhere, but this API is specifically about digital sales (where the MOSS system applies) so it will typically be that headline rate that you need anyway. Of course, there's no guarantee that that will always be the case, and to know for sure you need to understand the tax systems of 28 different EU member states. This is (one of many reasons) why the new EU VAT rules have been so c…
Sure, the headline rate is applicable for most things, but not everything, and those differences can be important. For instance, if Amazon are selling children's shoes into Ireland, they must charge 0% VAT. That's still a digital sale.
However the sevice discussed in this submission deals with VAT for digital goods and services. Selling shoes, regardless if done via internet, phone or fax, is not considered a sale of a digital product.
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Indeed. I'm not sure we would have done it if we're realised how much of a pain it was really going to be. I know people running slightly larger businesses (a few employees, turnover in the low millions) who have made similar comments even at their scale. There's certainly a view around that it would be better to simply decline sales to customers in other EU member states, and there was even legal advice being taken…
I simply shut down. The VATMOSS nonsense ate up all the profits turning a 350 euro VAT filing into a quarterly mess costing upwards of 1000 euros. The API could be useful if it is guaranteed to be always up-to-date, but there is no such guarantee, and it makes it impossible as it is coded right now to do anything else but to compute a sale that has just happened rather than a sale which happened at a specific point i…
likewise, I simply now do not sell to customers based in the EU outside of my country
the EU is run for the benefit of large businesses, small business is simply an afterthought
While the effort in general should be appreciated (especially open sourcing the code!), I'm doubtful that the REST API has practical use. "I calculated the VAT for the products I'm selling using that one website" is just too much of a liability risk for a business to take. Who do you hold liable in the event that the calculation was wrong?
Of course, you are right about liability. You can sue your accountant. But I assume it will be more difficult for an open source project.