💬 Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 20.09.23 @2pm

[community-team@ebay]

Hi everybody!

The Community Chat will open at 2pm and will remain open until 3pm on Wednesday. After that it will be closed for further questions. Of course, we will continue to take care of answering any questions that may still be unanswered—We’ll get to everything as quickly as possible. 

Please ask your questions in the thread below. In order to be able to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we ask you to have one question per post. Of course, you can make as many posts as you like in the Chat- the more the merrier!

Our eBay Community Team is made up of marco@ebay and katie@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, ProTrader, Fulfilment, Parts & Accessories, Payments, and the Community itself. Anything we aren’t sure on we’ll know the people who will be! Please ask us any questions you may have and we’ll do all we can to support. 

To ask your question, click Reply in the lower-right corner of this post, type your question, and click Reply between 2pm and 3pm. The community team will answer each incoming question in chronological order, and will quote the original question in each answer. 

Please note that any reply without a question to the community team or discussion replies may be removed from the chat. We want to keep on track to get through as many questions as possible. We welcome all discussion to be moved to the discussion boards. 

If you missed the weekly chat time, please ask your question in the community boards and tag us or we will be back next week with another chat! 

Many thanks,

Your eBay Community Team

[marco@ebay]

Thanks for your question, ducatimondo.

I will check with them, and get back to you as soon as I get an update on this. 

Thank you,

Marco

[marco@ebay]

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@ducatimondo wrote:

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@marco@ebay wrote:

Hi ducatimondo,

I've just got an update on this, please see below.

eBay’s tax methodology is to remove the VAT at the rate specified by the seller on the item, and then add VAT based on the delivery country.

The logic for this is that if a seller has listed a VAT inclusive price, then they no longer are responsible for the VAT and instead eBay has to take responsibility.  

Example:

VAT registered Seller lists item GBP100, and indicates that they have applied 20% VAT.  As the UK works on an inclusive pricing, this means GBP100 is the VAT inclusive price (100% seller revenue + 20% VAT).

We impute UK VAT out at 20%, giving seller revenue of GBP83.33, VAT of 16.67

We then calculate the VAT payable by eBay based on the delivery address e.g. 23% based on IE buyer address.  So buyer with an IE delivery address will be charged 102.50 – 83.33+IE VAT 19.17

It is for this reason we ask VAT registered sellers to provide the VAT rate that they use in their pricing when listing items; if the seller provides a different VAT rate (e.g. a rate of 25% for Denmark) then we impute that rate. 

This is the logic that has been in place since 1 January 2021 for the UK and 1 July 2021 for the EU. 

Regarding VAT on postage, Royal Mail (or a similar universal postal operator) does not charge VAT.  However, the seller wouldn't be a postal carrier and so is required to account for VAT on their postage charges.  Our logic therefore assumes that a seller's shipping pricing is based on a VAT inclusive price for postage also.  HMRC have some guidance here which may be of help.

Please note that you will not able to reply here, as this chat is already closed.

Thank you,

Marco

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Hi Marco,

Continuing on from our discussion and my question last week regarding the VAT on shipping for international items, I have quoted your reply above that came after the thread had closed.

Regarding the highlighted section above, are you really gambling on VAT for millions of transactions based on an assumption?
Allow me to clarify something for you here, that assumption is wrong in every single case.
You also mention that the seller is not a postal carrier and therefore has to account for VAT. Yes, this is true and easy, there is NO VAT in international postage for anyone at all that is shipping from the UK to anywhere that is not the UK, albeit a private seller, a business seller, a postal operator or not postal operator. This has been true for the entire UK since 1st Jan 2021. It has been the exclusive responsibility of eBay to apply this correctly since 1st July 2021

I might also add that you are also incorrect in your statement that "Royal Mail (or a similar universal postal operator) does not charge VAT"

It is more accurate to say that the retail side of Royal Mail, trading as Post Office Counters Ltd that deal directly with the public do not charge VAT on the Royal Mail products they sell, such as 1st class and 2nd class post.

We use Royal Mail 48, Royal Mail 24, Royal Mail Special Delivery, etc on our OBA account and are charged a VAT element to all of the services we are provided by Royal Mail, as we buy them from Royal Mail and not the Post Office.

It seems that eBay have no idea about UK tax law or how to implement it.

Back to eBay's assumption about the postage including VAT...

Are you basing this on if the item contains VAT, so the listing says 20% VAT applicable and then applying or more accurately removing 20% VAT from the postage on said item?

Or are you assuming that the postage will contain 20% VAT irrespective of the VAT status of the item. So would a 0% VAT rated item like a book or children's clothing have no VAT removed from the postage? Or would the same item, with no VAT in the item have 20% VAT removed from the item anyway, even though the product is 0% VAT rated?

Of are you basing this all on the seller's status and only removing VAT from the postage if the seller is a VAT registered business.
Are you expecting me as a seller to add VAT on all my international postage, so you can remove it, thus breaching international law?

Are you then expecting us all to over charge buyers or more accurately charge buyers VAT on postage when eBay is not being VAT controller through IOSS or the other areas such as some states of USA, Singapore, Australia, etc? I ask this as when eBay change the taxes on the item, you do not do this for all sales, only those you are now VAT controller for. This is a moving table, as you just decide to implement new ones without warning, such as recently adding Jersey into the sales you are now controlling VAT on?

The only way to do this correctly is to use the long time established and internationally recognised and implemented rule that there is no VAT on international postage from the UK to anywhere and not have sellers guess what ever you feel like doing on any given day, based on an assumption and without even asking us.

Can you check with your relevant team why they are making this assumption and if they plan to change to so that it works correctly; no VAT from anyone on international postage.

Apologies this is posted so late in the hour, I have been writting this as I can in between trying to keep up with customers in the shop and on the phone, so do not expect to be able to reply again.

Thanks 

Russ

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Hi ducatimondo,

I've just got an update on the above from the VAT team.

I've been confirmed that sellers are required to list their prices including all appropriate taxes and duties.  Unless a seller is listing only for the export market, a seller should be including UK VAT in their item and in their associated postage prices. VAT registered business sellers are accordingly asked to list their items + the VAT rates they included on their pricing. 

It is on this understanding, that when an item is shipping to an EU address from the UK, we remove a VAT value based on the VAT rate specified by a seller on the item, and on the associated shipping.

If a seller is not including UK VAT in their pricing, they should list with 0% VAT. eBay will then add VAT at the appropriate rate based on the delivery address. 

Much of this information is set out on our Help Page “Your VAT Obligations” – the section on VAT calculation methodology here.

Please note that you will not be able to provide a reply here, as this chat is already closed.

Thank you,

Marco