EU & VAT
Posted by John Clutterbuck on
We've had a few emails asking about EU & VAT. Our understanding of EU regulations is that VAT is meant to be charged at the local rate of the country where the user places an order. If VAT is not applied then the local postal service can apply VAT and an admin charge. This can be avoided by non EU suppliers applying VAT and paying it to the EU via the IOSS scheme. Now IOSS is only practical if you pay VAT (in the UK). We are a tiny little company and our turnover is well below the threshold for VAT registration. Even if it were enough, books and magazines are zero rated in the UK so we still wouldn't charge VAT anyway.
The upshot is we can't apply VAT nor pay the EU via IOSS. This unfortunately means our EU customers face a lottery of whether their postal service decides to intercept the Review and add VAT and a fee. We wish it were otherwise.