VAT Advice from website owners

[HardGlam]

Hello all, my accountants are unsure on whether we should be VAT registered for this year coming.

We are approaching the dreaded VAT area in turnover this year and my accountants are unsure of if we should be liable for VAT because 50% of our sales come from outside of europe. They seem to find it a very grey area.

We bill with ccbill eu and epoch eu but I would not have thought that we need to pay VAT on sales from outside of europe.

The funds come in to our UK bank account in dollars from ccbill eu and epoch eu.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance and I hope you all have a great xmas.

James

[Scarbo]

Hi James,

Hope this helps.

If your turnover of VAT taxable goods and services supplied within the UK for the previous 12 months is more than the current registration threshold of ?70,000, or you expect it to go over that figure in the next 30 days alone, you must register for VAT.

BUT...

If you supply goods and services both inside and outside the UK, then you may need to register for UK VAT if the value of your UK supplies ALONE exceed the registration threshold.

You DON'T need to include supplies you make in other countries when calculating your VAT taxable turnover for registration purposes - so leave out of your calculation any goods and services you supply where the place of supply is another country rather than the UK.

This from the HMRC website. !happy!

Cheers

[Paul L]

I would talk to an accountant that knows the industry.

And ignore anything mentioned on this forum. You need proper correct advice.

[paul jones]

As a general rule, if you discuss it in writing with the VAT people they will usually give you a clear ruling IF they have come across it before and you are not trying anything that looks like a "cunning plan".

You also need to be concrete with them as they cannot give tax advice. They cannot tell you what to do, they can only tell if your proposal or understanding is correct. So lay out your position in simple terms.

This is really just "I am an Internet publisher with a revenue which is ?X UK, ?Y EU, ?Z Rest World. Am I right to think that YADDA is how I need to deal with VAT". They should know their rules on that. The fact that's it adult doesn't matter.

If you get an answer you like, they can't really back track later unless it should have been obvious to a muppet that they were wrong. (They can, but only so far as "oops, we were wrong, from now on it's ....")

If they give an answer you don't like and could be expensive, pay a specialist to look at it.

[HardGlam]

Thanks for the info guys. I will let my accountants know.

My accountants like any accountants I have had are always unsure about my area for some reason. The adult area seems to confuse them.

Thanks again and merry xmas

James

[pilkster]

we put all ours on an ec sales list sent out by the vat office for outside the uk for goods and downloads etc with no problems...

[belfast_birty]

?70k turnover is not a great deal.As I'm sure you want to expand,both in UK,inside EU and outside EU,then you will have to consider registering for UK VAT eventually.This will not affect your non EU sales,and,dependent upon where your content comes from,you may well be being charged VAT,by such suppliers(unless they are cottage industry players).I think that your medium term view with your accountants,will be a matter of timing to register,rather than ''shall I or not.''