Hello,

In late March I got an email from Amazon saying my German Amazon account had been deactivated and all my invetory and seized due to a garnishment order being sent from the German tax office. According to the garnishment order, the German tax office claimed we owed them around 6000 EUR in VAT. We were very surprised by this, as we always pay our VAT in time, and we had heard nothing from anyone until our account was suddenly deactivated.

We contacted the German tax office, and they quickly found that the garnishment order had been sent to Amazon by mistake - due to a technical error in their system. They confirmed that we had no VAT debt and did not owe them any money. On April 10, the German tax office sent a withdrawal order to Amazon, telling Amazon we had no debt. Since then... nothing has happened.

We've opened a number of support cases that has lead nowhere.

We've called Amazon many times, which has also lead nowhere.

We have emailed "vatsubmit@amazon.com" many times, but gotten no replies, or replies saying we should not contact them about this. Even though it says in the deactivation email that we SHOULD contact them with any questions or appeals. It especially says that if we have a withdrawal order, we should send it to them. Which we have done, but, we hear nothing back.

We have also sent the withdrawal order to Amazon support, but it has lead to nowhere as well. Nobody will even look at it, they just say that Amazon have not received a withdrawal order from the German tax office. But the German tax office did send it. They sent one to us, and one to Amazon. And we got our copy 1.5 month ago, so, unless it has gotten lost in the mail (unlikely) Amazon did receive it but have somehow misplaced it or lost it themselves...

I have no idea what to do anymore. Amazon Germany is our "base" for all our EU sales, and its a big part of our company's income. We never did anything wrong at all, and due to this technical error at the German tax office, we're banned from selling on Amazon Germany. We also had tens of thousands of euros worth of inventory at Amazon Germany warehouses that remain seized, even though we did nothing wrong and the German tax office has done what they can to undo _their_ mistake, which led to this.

Does anyone have any idea what we can do here? How can we get in contact with an Amazon team that will actually look at our withdrawal order and help us reinstate our account?

The normal Amazon support can't help. The "Account health specialist" team can't help either. "vatsubmit@amazon.com" is also a dead end.

Right now Amazon has all our inventory seized, but they have no grounds to have it seized because we've had a withdrawal order from the tax office for 45 days, but Amazon refuses to look at it. We're seriously considering going to the police, but we're in Sweden, not Germany, so I have no idea if that's even possible or if it will lead to anything.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

As many of you know there is a "establishment for vat purposes" issue going on lately. Without going to details amazon considered me as non-eu established, because of that amazon deducted around 24k euros from my account because of historical vat. I dont have vat debt but still amazon took whole money from my amazon balance and my bank account. So at the end I am left with 0 money. BUT I have inventory and I still sell in all eu marketplaces so my debt was decreasing and coming closer to 0. I paid all the historical vat other than germany because my main sales were from germany. Amazon already took whole money from my balance and bank account but I am left with 8K euros debt in germany. During this time amazon was trying to take 8K euros almost everyday from my bank account and every try was declining because I had no money on my bank(because of amazon). After many trials amazon deactivated my germany account. But I have my inventory in germany and I was selling everyday, now how can I pay this amount? I dont have any other income other than amazon. I invested all of my money to inventory. Amazon needs to activate my germany listing so I can sell and pay my debt. The reason of deactivation is already amazon itself. I sell in other eu marketplaces but it is going so slow. Anybody has experience about this issue?

Hi Amazon,

Last Friday, our Amazon DE account was deactivated because the information linked to our VAT number no longer matched for the following reason:

Our VAT registration number was rejected for one or more of the following reasons:

1. The 'legal name' on your Seller Central account does not match the information stated in the German Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt).

2. The VAT registration number address on your Seller Central account does not match the information stated in the German Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt).

After checking both pieces of information, we concluded that all the details were correct and the VIES registry also confirmed that our VAT number is indeed valid. It has now been three days, and our account remains deactivated.

Does anyone know what actions we can or should take?