Tax Fraud - Amazon Avoiding Responsibility
Hi All,
Has anyone ever had any problems with Amazon not charging VAT on an order, when the tax should be due?
We had some orders, sold on Amazon.de, shipped from UK (pre-Brexit) through FBA, going to Bulgaria (EU).
These orders have been now flagged up to us by HMRC, as it seems that the buyer used someone else VAT number on Amazon, so that he avoided paying VAT on this orders (B2B EU export).
Upon checking the details on the invoice, they are completely different than the data in VIES for that VAT number (different company, address, town etc.).
We have raised this with Amazon, but they say they don’t take any responsibility if details provided by customer are wrong, meaning anyone can buy through B2B with someone else VAT number and save yourself 20%.
Any advise would be much appreciated.
Thanks
0 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
As it’s Amazon’s responsibility to verify a customers details, I would definitely say that they were responsible.
I guess the obvious thing to do, is to bounce it back to HMRC and see where they stand on it.
But you most definitely need to have your accountant involved in this one.
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
I’m confused about this, what do HMRC have to do with an export? Exports don’t have VAT charges on them.
Seller_tRuvBEHDedp4q
This is one of the main reasons I dont use Amazon VCS
Ultimately you are responsible for your own tax affairs. Trying to tell HMRC that it was the fault of some third party will not wash with them. As PeterB has said you will probably have to pay HMRC the missing VAT and then attempt to recover from Amazon - and I wish you the best of luck.
I am thinking of filing my own suit to recover the EU VAT Amazon still remove from FBM sales into the EU when they should be removing UK VAT (if its applicable) as the item is sold on the UK site with UK VAT. When the VAT rate is higher in the country where the item is sold, this actually leads to Amazon paying less VAT to the EU and the seller having less net sales (and therefore the UK government having less income tax)
