19k VAT bill from Germany but I don't sell there
Hello I received an invoice from the Hannover-Nord German tax office for 19,000Euros for VAT.
I registered for VAT there about 2 years ago but couldn’t get my head around importing and selling there.
And so I have sold no goods or held any goods in Germany and asked accounts to deregister.
Could this be a scam or has anyone had similar?
17 replies
Seller_7VbclcPFFRTnc
Did you submit monthly and annual returns whilst awaiting deregistration
Did you get confirmation of deregistration ?
Who are ‘accounts’ ? Your own accounts department in your company, a 3rd party private accountant or amazon vat services - avask etc ?
Seller_qZO3ZCjoBXEeL
Did you sell in Germany prior to Brexit? Could this be a historic bill with late fees?
Seller_KccpYMjDGSVAh
Been there, done that and got the t-shirt!
It isn’t a scam - if you have crossed the €100k threshold pre-Brexit then Hannover have acquired your sales history from Amazon and are now coming to collect with penalties on top…
You can’t ignore it unless you don’t want to sell to Germany again because they can have your accounts on Amazon / eBay etc. closed down / blocked in Germany.
The good news is that if you have paid the VAT to HMRC instead of the German tax office (which happened in our case) then you can pay the Germans and then re-claim it back from HMRC provided it was within the last 4 years.
We had to pay €45k and were able to re-claim £25k or so back from HMRC. It was unfortunate - we crossed the €100k threshold in 2018 and registered for VAT in Germany pre-Brexit. Then we got hit with a similar demand from Hannover and in their supporting documentation, they showed we had actually crossed the threshold in 2013 by €2,000 or so and we hadn’t realised 
VAT was collected but paid in the UK so we could claim up to 4 years worth but not the full amount. Annoyingly, the tax office can go back 7 years to chase unpaid VAT but you can only reclaim VAT errors up to 4 years.
Bottom line though - I wouldn’t ignore it.
Maja_Amazon
Hello @Renitor
Thanks for reaching out on Seller Forums.
I would advice you to contact official German Tax office and request more information there to got more clarity.
Best,
Maja
Seller_gldrb8K9DIYmC
THanks for all your replies and experiences.
I now think I wasnt deregistered and they have applied a guestimate in lieu of no returns submitted. Hopefully easy to rectify!!
Seller_vtSzvxtW9StxE
if its a mistake, try calling them on +49 511 67900, i found them very helpful - twice.
And their English was perfact atleast it was better than mine. Mine was annual return confusion and was taxed twice fo the same year but was sorted in one phone call only. Worth giving a try.
Seller_gldrb8K9DIYmC
I think they have applied a guesstimate due to lack of returns
Seller_nRhZxElkqUPAM
Get an Elster ID and submit the returns
