VAT rule change

[Steve Green]

Anyone heard about this?

It sounds like it could affect e-books and presumably digital comics.

In short (and I may be wrong) that you need to be VAT registered no matter what the size of your turnover.

(In the UK the threshold is around £80K)


http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/25/eus-new-vatmoss-rules-could-create-a-vatmess-for-startups/

[Steve Green]

[IndigoPrime]

Form my understanding, if you use a payment provider, the onus is on them to deal with VAT changes; if not, you're screwed. It's a terrible change, ostensibly to benefit small businesses and stop larger ones getting away with selling from places with lower VAT levels; but the reality is the rules will do the opposite.

[Professor Bear]

I know of at least one writer who now has to stop publishing ebooks altogether thanks to these new VAT charges.  I can't speak for anyone else who's ever tried to pursue a career in the creative industries, but I have personally found the current government in various forms to have stood in my path and tried to prevent me from doing so by many and various means (some we now know to have been unlawful), so I look forward to now having to give them a cut of what little I earn from a job they actively tried to stop me doing.

Cameron's fucking Britain.

[The Legendary Shark]

Just ignore them. They're their rules, not ours.

[ZenArcade]

That's the prob shark, try ignoring them and they'll throw the f**king book (no pun) at you. Still it was good to see Merkel kicking the jumped up prick into touch. Z

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Or you can register under FRS7200 at the writer or artist flat VAT rate of 12.5% and claim the 7.5% difference yourself.

EDIT: Speak to an accountant before doing so, not proper advice etc. (But, seriously, if you are a professional in the creative field and you are not doing this then you really should take advice - if you pay HMRC VAT at 20% then you are very likely to be costing yourself.)

[Jim_Campbell]

Once again, I must observe that taking legal advice from the Shark is not a good idea. HMRC has zero sense of humour where VAT is concerned -- people ACTUALLY GO TO PRISON for playing fast and loose with the VAT rules. Note that I —largely pro-EU— will freely acknowledge that these new rules are fucking idiotic and I am furious that while Cameron was pandering to the UKIP crowd on the non-issue of EU immigration, they let this lunacy pass through the European Parliament.

Cheers

Jim

[ZenArcade]

Cameron doesn't give ont tupenny damn about anything but fighting off the UKIP surge and keeping his masters happy. The quandty he found himself in the other day was a perfect storm of being faced down by a real politician along with being told to come to heel by the corporate paymasters who have every interest in unlimited immigration in order to flatline wage levels. I hasten to add this is not an anti immigration post and I should really sod of to the political thread anyway. Z

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I know of at least one writer who now has to stop publishing ebooks altogether thanks to these new VAT charges.  I can't speak for anyone else who's ever tried to pursue a career in the creative industries, but I have personally found the current government in various forms to have stood in my path and tried to prevent me from doing so by many and various means (some we now know to have been unlawful), so I look forward to now having to give them a cut of what little I earn from a job they actively tried to stop me doing.

Cameron's fucking Britain.

It is, of course, a European ruling.

[Steve Green]

It doesn't look like it affects me directly - going by that flowchart, but I've asked my accountant about it.

It does seem really stupid, and strange that this is the first I've actually heard about it.

Indirectly though, there are plenty of people who make software/plugins who sell to end users that this will add another layer of bureaucracy to.

[The Legendary Shark]

Jim is absolutely correct - taking legal advice from me is utterly insane. I don't mean this as a joke or a dig but as a statement of fact.
.
If you have anything to lose, ignore me.
.
If you have nothing to lose, well, then you have nothing to lose.

[ZenArcade]

Oh Sharky, you're just too bad. Z

[Professor Bear]

Cameron's fucking Britain.

It is, of course, a European ruling.

About which a certain fat tory cunt had nothing to say.

Once again, I must observe that taking legal advice from the Shark is not a good idea.

Usually I would agree, but I quite like the idea of the mileage the media will get from HMRC's huge legal costs of thousands of revenue claims for the equivalent of a cut from four sales of a 99p ebook.
Plus there's the probably-inevitable moment when the media will start running quotes from JK Rowling about how this kind of thing would have stopped her creating Harry Potter if it had been in place years ago - and God knows, right now it's not like the media need much coaxing to run stories about how uncaring Eurocrats squash the dreams of the Little Englander.

[TordelBack]

It seems insane not to have a turnover cutoff.  For a small business in a service sector with little or no materials cost on a per unit basis there's simply no way of offsetting VAT, never mind the hassle of dealing with charging it.  I know from this year's return to the business world that at least some of my private sector contracts have depended on my rates being VAT exempt due to turnover. I don't envy you creative types.