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VAT discrepancy on a UK website when switching from UK to Italy for postage.


Tommygunn

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I sent a UK registered company an email asking why they charge 20% VAT when an item/s are sent to the UK but they charge 22% when sending to Italy. The only thing that changed was the destination country, the payment currency (£ Sterling) remained the same but the total was increased by £1.87 for the Italian order.

This sounds like complete bu****it as I'm paying a UK based company and hence the UK government, doesn't matter where it's sent.

Their reply:

Quote

Many thanks for your email.
This is because VAT in Italy is 22% whereas in the UK it is 20%.
It doesn't matter where the product is shipped from as your local VAT rate must be charged when an item is entering that country.
We hope this helps.

I include screen grabs below to show the differences.

Thoughts?

Tom.

1_UK_WR13_5_DP_GBP_English.jpg

 

2_Italy_47843_GBP_English.jpg

 

 

 

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On 6/19/2018 at 1:50 PM, DrAlexanderTobacco said:

All above board - VAT is charged based on the country the purchaser resides in - otherwise you'd have a "VAT haven" in Luxembourg where shell companies sell from to take advantage of the lowest EU VAT rate (17%)

 

E: Also what Skarclaw said...

Jog my memory, when did those regulations come into force? It's a recent thing, as I remember reading about it a couple of months back and getting seriously PO'd.

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32 minutes ago, Mike_West said:

Jog my memory, when did those regulations come into force? It's a recent thing, as I remember reading about it a couple of months back and getting seriously PO'd.

No clue, I'd seriously be surprised if it was a recent thing owing to the aforementioned exploit-ability.

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31 minutes ago, DrAlexanderTobacco said:

No clue, I'd seriously be surprised if it was a recent thing owing to the aforementioned exploit-ability.

It's a recent thing, last year I was doing some shopping at EU-located shops and they were calculating VAT based on the seller's country, not mine. That, and when the change was reported, I found it colossally moronic, unnecessarily bureaucratic, unfair and counterproductive. That, and since nobody exploited the potential loophole you mentioned, was it even necessary in the first place?

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52 minutes ago, Mike_West said:

It's a recent thing, last year I was doing some shopping at EU-located shops and they were calculating VAT based on the seller's country, not mine. That, and when the change was reported, I found it colossally moronic, unnecessarily bureaucratic, unfair and counterproductive. That, and since nobody exploited the potential loophole you mentioned, was it even necessary in the first place?

Can you show me the report you saw? Because once again I'd be very surprised at this, considering the entire point of VAT is to charge the consumer and not the supplier (most countries having an exemption system in place for businesses that spend a certain amount etc)

 

VAT rates have always been set by countries, and thus the way I see it the procedure would be to always calculate VAT at point of purchase.

 

 

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58 minutes ago, Mike_West said:

It's a recent thing, last year I was doing some shopping at EU-located shops and they were calculating VAT based on the seller's country, not mine. That, and when the change was reported, I found it colossally moronic, unnecessarily bureaucratic, unfair and counterproductive. That, and since nobody exploited the potential loophole you mentioned, was it even necessary in the first place?

https://www.vatlive.com/eu-vat-rules/distance-selling/internet-and-ecommerce-vat/?sessionId=1529509181015&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F&lastReferrer=www.vatlive.com

 

This is worth a read. This has been going on for a while so you must be confused with something else.

 

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19 hours ago, DrAlexanderTobacco said:

Can you show me the report you saw? Because once again I'd be very surprised at this, considering the entire point of VAT is to charge the consumer and not the supplier (most countries having an exemption system in place for businesses that spend a certain amount etc)

Nope, it was on the local newspaper's website, and pretty long ago.

I also looked up my orders at a German LARP shop where I'm buying various bits and bobs, they don't even have a mechanism to calculate foreign VAT rates separately. I don't think that a computer shop in Italy where I was looking up laptop prices had one either.

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19 hours ago, scorch said:

Long and short of it. Just pay your damn taxes and stop trying to weasel out of it. :p

If you knew what my taxes are spent on, you'd encourage me to weasel out of every possible one. The comptrollers are having a field day with several ministries and government agendas right now.

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