VAT Calculation Service
Can you use it just for generating the invoice for business buyers and ignore the rest of the ‘service’ or does it have other implications on figures in your account?
I have a lovely accountant who does all that side of thing, (I cant even add up let alone get my head around that sort of maths!)
I dont want to sign up for the calculation service if it’s going to make his life harder unravelling all the mess before he can do anything but I also dont want to be having to be emailing him for invoices needed within 24 hours.
I sell mainly keyrings but still get occasional business buyers, I very much doubt they can get away with claiming a keyring as a business expense! I’ve never sold more than one at a time to a business buyer. It’s ridiculous that we cant opt out of this B2B thing.
What price is the business buyer charged - inclusive or exclusive VAT?
19 replies
Seller_5ia3Q2YxXVCxe
I have signed up but I don’t use it for filing VAT returns - it generates VAT invoices my buyers can download.
Thats all I use it for and I don’t recall having to change any settings etc.
HOWEVER It also means my date-range reports now come NET not GROSS so be aware if you use those for any accounting.
As for what business buyers are charged, assuming they are VAT registered, if they are UK and you are UK then they pay VAT, if they are EU and you are UK they pay NET and you ahould fill in the EU VAT transfer form quarterly via the HMRC. or do Amazon do that… ooh, good point… do we get the VAT number of the buyer? im not sure, i’ll need to look. arse.
Seller_EHYOwAkoZV3Hb
I said this before but I’ll say it again as I’m sure it applies to others.
I would be happy to have the VAT Calc service if I was FBA only but as I do FBM, I soon discovered that FBM sales to the Channel Islands were made without VAT being charged. This is correct as all sales to CI must be charged without vat, not just business customers.
But as I had been using the savings on vat to subsidising the additional cost of sending heavy parcels to CI, I found out that I was losing out. Some parcels cost £40-£60 to ship there so not a loss I was happy to absorb.
So I turned off the VAT Calc service PDQ.
This is the only thing that is stopping me from switching it back on.
Seller_ftMMn0UeA4IQP
Thank you both - I knew there were reasons that people werent overly happy with the service but I couldnt remember what they were.
I wish we could opt out of B2B altogether if it wasnt relevent
Seller_6p2KuKnPUeGFg
Now that Amazon has pushed for us to send invoices within 24 hours of a business purchase, I don’t see much choice than enroll instead of checking daily and manually creating invoices for their business customers.
Seller_6p2KuKnPUeGFg
If I enroll, will it change how I get my accountant to do my books?
I just give her date range reports and spreadsheets of the Zero rated sales
Seller_aOogeQQcgrYam
I use the VAT calculation service in combination with A2X to pull all my Amazon payments/charges into Xero (the cloud accounting service we use), and it works incredibly well. The VAT, income and charges are all separated out when it hits our accounts, and so far we’ve not had an issue at all. Saves a lot of time.
One gotcha we have run into though, is if you list on the other EU marketplaces. If you create a listing, state the tax code individually, and then add it to the other marketplaces by stating the cost at the bottom of the inventory listing, the tax code does not carry through to the other marketplaces. You then have to go into each marketplace, and each listing and manually update the codes. For that reason we only list items on the other marketplaces now if they use our default VAT code (which is 20% for obvious reasons).
Seller_XLRct2fNrcwok
This is amazon’s attempt to get us to register for the VAT Calculation Service .why ?
One thing Amazon do not realise is our invoice’s have our website address ,email , and phone numbers
on
Seller_DnUoA453l2RGq
We have just deactivated the VAT calculation service. We found anomalies in the reporting and some of the numbers weren’t matching up. I haven’t got the time to go through line by line so I’ll just do the invoicing myself.
Seller_f4qaOP2rNgn8I
We’re switching it on and giving our account the heads up about the date range reports.
Open question for anyone with the service already activated…
Amazon state that “For sellers who use our VAT Calculation Services, the following report will include tax calculation information for sellers to use in order to prepare any required tax reports and to remit VAT to the appropriate tax authorities: Amazon VAT Calculation Report.”
Is this “Amazon VAT Calculation Report” a new and separate report that becomes available upon enrolment? Or are they actually referring to the “Amazon VAT transactions report” that currently sits in the tax reports section?
Seller_Su1KN1J4SGmFU
I have had big problems with this service. I have noticed that downloading the FBA orders through our 3rd party integration tool (Tradebox, we use), doesn’t recognise EU customers who have registered VAT Numbers and therefore exempt.
So the overall price may be correct once in our accountancy program (Sage, blurgh), but actually its wrong.
Say a price is €9.99 inc VAT normally. With a normal VAT calculation that will be €8.33 + VAT, and business registered customers will see that.
Then an EU buyer who registered their VAT number in their account, should therefore be buying at €8.33 + ZERO VAT.
But the order downloaded into Sage will read €6.49 + €1.39 VAT.
So totally wrong. And a nightmare to sort when you realise this down the line. Partly (mostly) my fault perhaps.
Cue a load of credits, and manual re-invoicing, taking many many man hours
All because Amazon will not disclose the VAT information to Tradebox, so they cant rectify it, and we have to do it manually
I have rambled on way too much
Bye
