VAT Registration
Hi All,
I received this email below from Amazon about VAT registration. At the moment I sell only on UK marketplace as a sole trader with few sales per month. My understanding is that as sole trader, you don’t need to be VAT registered till you’re somewhere £85,000 or so. And again to be registered for VAT, you have to be a limited company which I’m not either way. Please can anyone help me where I’m getting it wrong or what I need to do before I get myself into trouble of deactivation. Would be appreciated.
Thanks
23 replies
Seller_BS5lg2keRs2QO
You don’t have to be a limited company to register for VAT.
The email looks a lot like one of their promotional emails advertising their service rather than a warning that you haven’t done something.
Seller_JYgXWnE2ieptu
I’ve had this this morning too. I do not need to register for VAT but the emails suggests I have to and there’s nowhere to tell them I don’t have nor need a VAT number. I’m just going round and round in circles on the settings pages. Are they going to shut my account or do I just ignore this? There is no definitive answer. I can’t work out if this is a promotional email or something I have to do. I’ve read of people having their accounts suspended because they didn’t register their VAT info even though they didn’t need it.
Seller_MT8rt0A2OpbCx
Once again, this it is bad practice by Amazon to encourage sellers to click on links in emails. It should read “There is a message for you in your seller central regarding VAT” There are so many scams around at the moment, it would be easy to send a similar email, linking to a website that looks like your login page, enter your details and the scammer has access to your account. I don’t click on links in emails.
I get calls, that I know are scams to extract money, almost every day at the moment, from BT, Microsoft, Sky, my Daughter, 
Seller_dbmt49milj5Pl
If you do FBA in UK , you must register for VAT, even if you dont reach 85k .
Once you send your first produtc to amazon’s warehouse, you have 90 days to register for VAT.
If you’d started sell as FBA, I think beter you register a company. Its easy and cheap in UK.
Seller_87mKFKKA3Vwkx
I get these emails almost weekly - I’m below the VAT threshold so I ignore them - and have been ignoring them for a couple of years now!
Seller_KM2No8jybV32S
From my personal experience, don’t have anything to do with Amazon’s VAT registration department.
Get independent advice and register yourself if needs be.
Their pan EU VAT registration has caused me no end of grief and continues to do so and when you ask for help Amazon pass the buck to their agent who then say it’s beyond their scope. We missed one email during lockdown which wasn’t sent to our perfomance notifications in the amazon seller login which was requesting power of attorney as Amazon/Avalara changed their tax filing partner in Germany.
As we didn’t sign this in time, and unknown to us as we were still getting returns generated and amounts to pay within the Amazon login which we paid on time, these returns were not being submitted. We found out when the German tax authority sent us an EUR8000 fine. Our monthly sales tax bill was only a few hundred euro’s.
What you need from a tax partner is someone who takes responsibility on your behalf. This is not Amazon/Avalara. I call it worst of both, you think they’re doing the job on your behalf, they don’t articulate to you any issues and then you end up having to do it yourself in the end anyway.
I suspect it’s great for the Chinese sellers who doctor their returns then fold after a year or so then wash rinse repeat.
