Disbursements withheld - "not established in the UK for VAT purposes."

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Seller_drRDxXcYTekDD

Disbursements withheld - "not established in the UK for VAT purposes."

anyone else get the notice from Amazon today?

"We have received a notice from the UK tax authority, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), that they have determined that you are not established in the UK for VAT purposes. We must comply with HMRC’s indication, as the responsible tax authority, even though we previously confirmed your establishment in the UK, based on our assessment.

As a consequence, effective upon receiving this notice, the disbursements of part or all of your Amazon sales proceeds to UK customers have been temporarily withheld. Also, your Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) inventory may be temporarily blocked from removal, unless the funds withheld exceed your estimated liability. Additionally, within 10 days, we will begin to collect and remit VAT taxes on your sales for goods delivered to UK customers."

I have no idea if HMRC have actually said this to Amazon or if its just a repeat of the situation earlier this year, I'm curious if anyone else has been affected by this again or just me?

I am and have always been a UK based business and always pay my tax obligations in full so I don't know where they've got the idea that I'm not.

Amazon throwing so many curveballs at me lately, between 'competitive pricing' policy and overcharging me FBA fees based on false measurements. Feels like they're squeezing everything out of us sellers, even more so than usual.

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Tags:Payments, Seller Central, Tax documents, Taxes, Verification
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Seller_drRDxXcYTekDD

Update - Logged in today to see my account is back to normal and disbursements are available again.

All I did was email HMRC but received no reply, so I'm not sure what's actually happened here. Maybe a glitch or some kind of error? Either way, very concerning that we can have our livelihoods suspended for such an arbitrary reason.

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Seller_76AUwmqvSyRIM

Could it have been a scam email? Was there any links of any kind in the email?

The wording doesn’t sound like Amazon-speak.

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Ash_AMZ

Hello @Seller_drRDxXcYTekDD,

Ash here to assist. First of all, I would like to apologize for the delay on our response.

It has been understood that you need help with your funds disbursement.

I hope the review of your account has been completed, and funds has been released.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on seller forums. The forums community and I, are here to assist with your concerns.

Regards,

Ash.

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Seller_9vdWGWz8QH0uZ

We got the same message on the 21st of August. But still going through verification process.

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Seller_drRDxXcYTekDD

FINAL UPDATE (HOPEFULLY)

I received a reply from HMRC today in the form of a letter (via email) which stated "We have accepted the information you have given us and have decided that you are established in the UK for VAT purposes."

After submitting this to Amazon through the account health page, they accepted the submission and informed me that they will recalculate any VAT they collected to send to HMRC between today and January 2021. Hopefully they will refund the VAT they have been collecting since August 22nd when I first got the performance notification.

The underlying issue was obviously legitimate and I'm glad it's over but the behaviour of Amazon support and the system has been bizarre with my disbursements turned on and off over 6 times in the last 2 weeks since I got the original notification.

I hope this thread can prove useful to anyone going through the same issue in the future.

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