New tax procedure selling/buying from abroad

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,103]

I dont know if this was discussed here somewhere before. But I saw this thread on atariage

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/317194-uk-customers-cant-be-sent-games-by-atariage-anymore-european-maybe-next/page/3/#comments

and it sounds like selling/buying from Europe (specifically UK right now but all of Europe in a few months) is about to get alot more tesious and expensive. Basically sellers in the US will have to collect and submit the UK's VAT tax when selling to someone in the UK? If I'm understanding it right, I very well may not be. I don't know how the UK could possibly enforce that on international sellers, but we'll see.

[fcgamer | 5,019]

What all categories of items are included with these new rules?

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,103]

11 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

What all categories of items are included with these new rules?

From the comments in the thread it seemed like pretty much everything. Though I haven't tried to dive deep into it. 

If what it sounds like is true it would require sellers to register with the UK somehow and do a bunch of extra paperwork to sell something to them. Which means the people of the UK will have alot less options because small business will not want to go through the effort and just exclude the country all together.

However it did sound like it might just move everything to ebay/amazon because they are responsible for this since they are a marketplace for all the sellers. BUT that still means the end buyer is still paying a butt load more in taxes/fees/etc 

Edited February 21, 2021 by LeatherRebel5150

[RH | 5,240]

Any increase in tax will definitely suppress buying but regarding sales, I wonder if eBay can/will make it easier for outside sellers who except payment through eBay.

If eBay positions itself as a proxy, the buyer pays eBay for your item, eBay handles the taxes and legal fulfillment, but then "pays" you for the item which you ship.

I can't see why provisions for this can't be made, but who knows?

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,103]

5 minutes ago, RH said:

Any increase in tax will definitely suppress buying but regarding sales, I wonder if eBay can/will make it easier for outside sellers who except payment through eBay.

If eBay positions itself as a proxy, the buyer pays eBay for your item, eBay handles the taxes and legal fulfillment, but then "pays" you for the item which you ship.

I can't see why provisions for this can't be made, but who knows?

Part of the problem is that it works two ways. If I want to buy something from the UK now I'm paying the VAT tax too. Which I don't think was the case before.

[Brickman | 4,216]

Wow that seems crazy. I can’t see how the UK government is going to be able to collect VAT from someone selling a game on a forum. The administration wouldn’t be worth it.

Also, why should we pay VAT if we don’t live in the UK? I think this will crash the UK’s online economy pretty quickly if these two things are going ahead.

[Tanooki | 5,142]

Why should we?  Because their government is crooked and wants as much as they can get if it comes to one of their citizens.  ebay as it stands now already does this racket with Us taxes since states started copying each other in the last few years so now like all who do tax, to screw you online on second hand goods which is disgusting but unavoidable. 

Some people in the states have it real rough, there are a handful of states where those jackasses they voted in now limit you to as little as 600 a YEAR in second hand sales, and then you have to take an inventory and submit taxes on your throw away goods from garage sales in your own front yard!  Massachusetts does this as I have a friend there and it really hurts, so him and others don't report illegally and just post to facebook and close the sales as 'unsold' or pulled item when it's done.

That's kind of like what the UK is doing here, second hand goods tax, because paying them once when it was new wasn't enough already.

I already block sales outside the US which was a bit of a chore on ebay because they tell you one thing, but do another despite that, so I had to regionally block each continent, then countries that overlap into others including our own to block all outside the US sales.  With all the theft, scams, and shade we had posted for years over on NA, now combined with ebay and it's screw the seller antics since I have no desire to open that liability.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Tanooki

[OptOut | 9,036]

Just another reason to be glad O left the UK!

Man, that place has REALLY gone downhill since I left!

[a_profile_name | 230]

This sounds like either pure stupidity, or that the real goal is to limit the import market by slowly chocking it with bureaucracy. Might be both actually.

[Brickman | 4,216]

16 hours ago, OptOut said:

Just another reason to be glad O left the UK!

Man, that place has REALLY gone downhill since I left!

It’s really sad the way the UK has headed. That place has become a haven for bureaucracy. Sounds like you made the right choice.

I’m anticipating a flood of Poms into Australia once the vaccines are done, I think a lot want to escape the UK after the COVID debacle.

[DefaultGen | 5,727]

I have no idea how it works, but Forward2Me has a proxy service that runs through Guernsey where you don't pay VAT apparently. I don't use it because something I want to buy ends up having expensive shipping to Guernsey, which defeats the purpose of consolidating my EU packages into one cheap single shipment.

[OptOut | 9,036]

7 hours ago, DefaultGen said:

I have no idea how it works, but Forward2Me has a proxy service that runs through Guernsey where you don't pay VAT apparently. I don't use it because something I want to buy ends up having expensive shipping to Guernsey, which defeats the purpose of consolidating my EU packages into one cheap single shipment.

Guernsey is technically not a part of the UK, it's a dependent territory, so they have their own tax rules etc. That's basically the British empire now... Guernsey, Gibraltar and the Falklands!

[OptOut | 9,036]

8 hours ago, sg17 said:

This sounds like either pure stupidity, or that the real goal is to limit the import market by slowly chocking it with bureaucracy. Might be both actually.

It seems like an especially dumb decision coming off the back of blowing up your relationship with your largest trading partner, which also happens to be the world's biggest single trading bloc, right on your front door step...

But whatever, as long as China don't bomb Taiwan I'm just pointing and laughing and buying up cheap money as the value of the Pound craters!!