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As they say, the online marketplaces will be responsible for registering and paying vat. Sellers will just see increased fees on their listing, I guess?
𝔒𝕨𝖑𝘡-
As they say, the online marketplaces will be responsible for registering and paying vat. Sellers will just see increased fees on their listing, I guess?
Yes, most likely.
Question is how will they structure it - if it is just a sale price % markup (20% plus a bit for the marketplace admin) or if they have a fixed admin charge per item sold and / or per seller as well.
If the latter it would make low cost items or small sellers unviable.
What I had been expecting is that this change might lead to a switch from individual items being posted from China (which is only viable because, under the international post offices agreement (UPU) it costs less to post something to a UK address from China than it does from the next town) we might see things coming in via container and sold as UK goods rather than posted individually from China (there is a fair bit of this now on eBay now if you search for 'UK only' stuff).
Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
frank9755
Yes. The impact will be on cheap things <£135
From a quick read it seems to say that any overseas seller will need to register for UK vat if they sell to customers in the UK. So that's everyone in China who is selling in Ali Express or ebay. Will they bother?
And the de minimis is being abolished. Now, things under £15 don't have to bother with vat. That will change so they will have to collect vat even on cheap things like phone cases and cables. There is a fixed cost to this so it probably means selling cheap stuff to UK customers won't be viable any more.
I believe Sweden and Australia have already abolished their de minimis and that it led to something like a 90% reduction in consumer imports from China.