As you may be aware, the UK and EU have reached a Free Trade Agreement which will take effect from January 1, 2021, following the end of the Brexit transition period, subject to being approved in the UK and EU Parliaments. We continue to review the details of this Agreement, and will update you as and when we have more information. In the meantime, you can continue to find the latest Government advice for the UK here, or via your local Government website.
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Does that mean that Pan European FBA will remained as it is? We can continue shipping goods to the UK and Amazon will help us move goods to europe since there is no tax?
No, PanEU is still changing - maybe Amazon will come up with some clever way of doing it in future.
To be clear - itās no import duties and quotas, VAT etc still needs to be thought of.
The problem is we are now outside the customs union so we now have custom borders, checks and fees to deal with which is why Amazon wonāt keep UK in PanEU FBA.
Itās very unclear at the moment. There could still be tariffs when sending goods that are not of UK origin from the UK to Europe right? The tariff free trade only applies to goods of UK origin (produced)ā¦such as cars made in the UK. Sending goods that were first imported from China from the UK to the EU would be subject to tariffs?
No. Not what it means. Pan European is no longer as it was. You can no longer use Amazon fulfilment centre stock to sell to European marketplaces. If you want to sell in Europe you need to set up your stock in EU locations.
Yes, we will need to wait for more clarity on this. We already have stock placed in EU locations but it will be great if the UK stocks can be transferred to EU warehouses if amazon can figure out a cost effective way of doing it.
Is that not mixing up Pan European stock storage with general International Listings (might be the wrong name).
I donāt use Pan European cause I havenāt been motivated to get VAT registered in the various countries, but Iāve still be making sales to European countries, with the stock stored in the UK and shipped accordingly. I canāt see that stopping now (though thereāll be additional paperwork, if I understand correctly, which Iām sure will be used as an excuse to increase feesā¦)
If you ship your goods from the UK to Europe you will have to do additional paperwork and pay additional handling fees charged by your couriers. These fees for example on a package from the UK to France could range anything from Ā£3 to Ā£10. There would also be extra time required for processing the parcel you sent. If what you are sending was not produced in the UK then there is a chance you may have to pay tariffs also but this part is very unclear.
What Iām trying to work out is if you import from China to UK and then export some (or all) to the EU, whether you end up paying duty on both the import to the UK and the import to the EU, or whether there is some duty reclaim mechanism from the UK for imports subsequently re-exported?
Last night, certain courier service via parcel2go implemented a big change. They already required 3 commercial invoices for non EU countries but the real surprise was that they made me print this out for parcels I was preparing to Ireland and the shockerā¦Northern Ireland. Some parcels donāt even have the physical space to put these documents. Has anyone else experienced this? the extra processing time of these is going to be a nightmare if it continues.
I read on the Government website:
From 1 January 2021, you can charge customers VAT at 0% (known as āzero rateā) on most goods you export to the EU.
A few questionsā¦
So does this mean, as a UK VAT registered company, we will now only charge VAT to UK customers. No VAT is charged to EU customers from Jan 1st?
Specifically regarding selling on Amazon, if we charge UK customers Ā£120 for a product, then Ā£20 will be the VAT element as before. If a customer based in France buys from the UK site they will still pay Ā£120, but we would not have to pay Ā£20 VAT to the Government?
If the French customer buys directly on our amazon.fr listing at the equivalent Euros price to Ā£120, again none of this would be VAT any more?
From what i was reading last night, if we want to continue to sell to EU customers, we need to register for VAT in that relevant country from January the 1st and make quarterly VAT returns for those nations as the Distanced seller VAT thresholds will be removed once we leave the EU. Alternatingly from July 2021 we will be able to register for MOSS and charge the customer the VAT rate for that country as part of the sale then make 1 quarterly VAT return for the whole of our EU sales.
However I only discovered this last night as it hasnāt been mentioned in any of āget ready for Brexitā newsletters or the gov.uk preparation website. Iām waiting for my accountant to confirm the above, and if she does then we will probably discontinue sales to the EU as Iām not prepared to do all that extra admin for 40-50 sales a month.
I expected it would be 0% VAT on sales to the EU and if it was over a certain value then the customer would be import duty, the same as Australia, USA, Canada etc however it looks like I was sadly mistaken.
Source of my information
There is also thisā¦ for sales under Ā£135, but i cant make any sense of it, Does it mean Amazon / eB*y would charge the VAT to the customer and they pay it on our behalves?
Your source of information is from August and 17 December - it is maybe not actuall. Wating for official Amazon news.
I specilly waiting for information about possibility to sell in EU from UK warehouse for not-VAT company. I think it should be returned, maybe with higher Amazon fee or same?
As I stated I am confused, so waiting for something official as there is nothing on gov uk site either. I doubt there will be any changes to the VAT law regardless of the trade agreement. Itās only 7 days away and is quite huge for all us sellers.
