VAT Verification woes: UK Company but non-UK based Director
I've been trading on Amazon for around 3 years and passed their initial verification process without any issues. I am now in a frustrating circular email chain with the VAT verification team primary hinged on providing proof of a company physical UK address + proof of UK employees, neither of which I have.
- I'm a UK passport holder but currently live in Ireland. I have a UK registered address care of my accountants though this is not staffed. Outside of a real physical forwarding address (currently c/o my accountants in Manchester) HMRC don't require a staffed office, and neither do they have a problem with the sole director not being based physically in the UK. As far as I'm aware from HMRCs perspective i'm compliant yet Amazon seem to think that having a bricks and mortar location is a requirement which personally I think is misplaced.
- My company is a UK registered LTD and has a turnover less than 85k so i've not registered for VAT. I appreciate I would need to be VAT registered automatically if my company was Irish and trading in the UK, however this is not the case as i'm registered as a UK Ltd and i'm perfectly within my rights not to register if I don't want.
Getting hold of someone on the phone is impossible and I wondered if anyone else had been through this? It's like talking to the wall. The fact that Amazon have higher standards than HMRC is very frustrating. Ultimately if they insist on duducting VAT at source then i'll pull my products from them and sell elsewhere though of course I would prefer not to need to do this.
6 replies
Seller_ZJhFeE3tNKzfh
I'm not sure where you have read about HMRC not requiring a staffed office. But I'd look up NETP on the UK Gov website.
This is the text from the page below....
Any person who makes taxable supplies in the UK may have a liability to be registered in the UK even if they have no physical presence here. We refer to such persons as non-established taxable persons (NETPs).
An NETP is any person who is not normally resident in the UK, does not have a UK establishment and, in the case of a company, is not incorporated here.
A UK establishment exists if:
- the place where essential management decisions are made and the business’s central administration is carried out is in the UK
- the business has a permanent physical presence with the human and technical resources to make or receive taxable supplies in the UK.
We would normally consider a company which is incorporated in the UK to have an establishment here as long as it is able to receive business supplies at its registered office.
I'd argue a forwarding address c/o your accountant doesn't meet the HRMC requirements above though it depends how much the accountants do.
Seller_uYHCehamdm6NX
Going through the same here from Ireland too. Any updates? I've pulled my inventory.
