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Private Seller of Book Collection VAT charged on sale abroad - Why?
Summary: gilly2605 is a private seller facing issues with VAT charges on sales to Germany, leading to a loss on a recent transaction. They express confusion about the application of VAT on second-hand books and question if it's due to selling abroad post-Brexit. tommystrezures explains that VAT for Germany involves IOSS, relating to customs and administration fees. However, gilly2605 insists the issue differs from past experiences, indicating recent changes in European charges. *vyolla* adds information about import VAT and administrative fees when sending packages to Germany. The discussion centers on clarifying these charges and finding solutions.
I am a private seller, mostly selling my Science Fiction Book Collection. I have just let a hardback sell on a good offer to a German customer, only to find that ebay have charged VAT at 7% and deducted it from the total for me. This is a new situation as far as I can tell and the problem is I am now selling the item at a loss because there is no longer enough money for the postage. There are a number of questions that arise out of this.
Q1. I am not a business so why is there even any mention of VAT, especially as all my books are second hand (I own them all and some of them have been through many owners as I was a collector)?
Q2. Is this something that has happened purely for items sold abroad?
Q2a. If I have to adopt this as something new, are there variations in rates per country?
Q2b. Does it apply to some countries and not others?
Q3. If I have to adopt this how do I calculate the VAT so I can add it to the price of the books and explain to my customers why the increase? I suppose that I would have to explain that in the description of each item? (Note to myself: Is it worth continuing to sell abroad, I don't sell that many anyway? I wonder if this is another thing that's backfired out of Brexit!)
Q4. If this was a mistake who do I speak to to get it rectified (obviously ebay, but it's getting notoriously difficult to get through to someone who understands problems and can get them fixed....let alone the difficulty I have in understanding them)?
Q5. I suppose I could cancel my sale and apologise to the customer (I don't particularly want to do that) but would the VAT refund also be processed?
Q6. Slightly off at a tangent, but a linked issue I'm having. When I sell an item to USA eBay collects the taxes (I guess that covers tariff changes and so on?), which does not affect my total like the above. However, when I do my postage on Royal Mail Click and Collect it's adding an additional charge, which seems to be 50p every time. If ebay has already collected the taxes what is RM doing here? Anybody else getting this? Is it a fault that ebay is not collecting enough.
I'm going to leave that there as it's complicated enough as it stands but I obviously do need some help in understanding what is going on!
Thank you in anticipation.
*vyolla*
MentorAug 13, 2026 at 11:22 AMUnder the new regs, if I take a package for Germany to my local Post Office and buy a label there I'm charged the import VAT up front plus a £1.50 admin fee.
tommystrezures
MentorAug 13, 2026 at 8:53 AMIf its going to Germany then its IOSS - VAT for the buyer in Germany. Been like that for a few years now.
Re Royal Mail thats their fee for processing the customs paperwork for safe arrival in the US, lets call it a Trump money grab, which RM have jumped on the back of.
gilly2605
OPAug 13, 2026 at 11:14 AMNo this is not IOSS, I've had that before and it doesn't affect my payment. This is something else at 7% (if I'm looking at it correctly) and it's being taken off my sale price, simply called VAT (I'm a private seller and don't do VAT, otherwise I would be able to claim it back along with all my other outgoings). Since writing this I had another look at the Click & Collect site and there are some notifications about some new charges to some European countries. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to be hit with even more cost when I go to get the postage for this item. It all seems to be getting very complicated to send anything anywhere !
Thank you for your comment, but "there's more going on here than meets the eye"!
tommystrezures
MentorAug 13, 2026 at 11:30 AM7% is the reduced vat rate to Germany instead of 19% for books.