VAT postage invoice

[livewire666]

Can anyone tell me where I can down load a vat invoice for postage purchased through eBay?

At one time there was a link after purchasing postage to the VAT invoice but now I can't find it.

Thanks in advance.

[marco@ebay]

Hi livewire666, thanks for your post.

If you go to the payments tab in your seller hub, and click on reports, you will be able to download a report for your postage labels. Here is a quick link to that section in case you want to use it.

I've also added a screenshot here for better visibility.

Hope this helps,

Marco

[cosmobooks]

Thanks for the link to the report, but it doesn't contain any info regarding the VAT paid on the postage ?  Where paid, eg on a UK order, this a reclaimable expense for a VAT registered seller.  Not all postage charges attract VAT, eg packets to USA.  We need an easy and quick way to identify the Vat element in all postage costs.  How can eBay provide a proper Vat invoice for postage.  It's not an optional extra but a legal requirement for us as sellers and for eBay as the entity making the VAT charge.

Robert.

[bdgzone]

Any Update regarding this ?

I buy hundreds RM postage labels every week and would be nice to have VAT invoice for all of them available to download . 

[cosmobooks]

I don't think eBay understand that they are breaking Vat regulation laws, nor do they care given none will have ever been legally responsible for the conduct a business nor experienced a Vat Inspection.  Looks like for now we are on our own and need to find our own solutions.

[thegadgetemporium]

Given the recent new protections eBay have introduced when buyers open 'Item not received' requests, I've foolishly switched to buying my labels through eBay. Started to prepare a VAT return today to find I've no way of seeing the amount of VAT spent on labels. I've found one method but it is individual to each label which will use an insane amount of my time. Have you found a workaround or had any information from eBay? 

[thegadgetemporium]

Unfortunately, I do not believe they're breaking any laws. They do provide us with a VAT label for our postage labels purchased through them. That being said the system is shocking and makes it incredibly difficult for sellers that purchase a lot of labels. It is for this reason I will be moving back to Royal Mail Click and Drop until they provide a better solution. 

If you go to "Orders" on the seller hub there is a option on the side for "Shipping Labels" on this tab it shows every individual label you have purchased and there is an option to "Download VAT invoice". As I mentioned before, this means they're operating legally but not necessarily in the interest of their sellers.

[cosmobooks]

You are of course completely right in noting how individual postage vat invoices can be obtained, however eBay are wrong in not providing a proper VAT element for postage in their monthly invoices for services & fees, which is of course where we get all our other expenses and vat paperwork.  They really ought to provide postage & appropriate Vat on their monthly invoice (where they have no entries for postage, despite collecting the charges for it),  and ideally show the vat element on the monthly Financial statement (where they show postage as a gross charge (ie incl.Vat).   It's all workable around, but this is simple stuff that they are getting wrong and creating hassles where none need exist.

[thegadgetemporium]

I completely agree with you, was utterly gob smacked when I found that it  wasn't attached to the monthly invoice or on its own independent one. But I shouldn't have assumed and I'm paying the price now. I've used a workaround for obtaining my VAT figure, as for retaining hard copies of receipts that is where I am struggling. Simply do not want to manually download a few hundred invoices each month.

marco@ebay  If eBay or a representative could acknowledge this is an issue so we know a solution is being worked out it would ease a lot of stress for a number of sellers.

[cosmobooks]

We too are tempted to revert to Click & Drop as a more satisfactory solution, but for the tedium of entering tracking numbers individually.  I hope eBay will likely encounter internal compliance issues from their auditors or lawyers and that may in due course force them to provide a proper Vat accounting invoice for postage.  

A quick & dirty fix if you only use eBay for UK postage (as we do) is to download the Track & Manage Your Packages page as a pdf for each month, attach that to a copy of the Financial Statement, and a single postage invoice from one order.  Not ideal, but arguably justified (& hope we never encounter a jobsworth).

My guess why eBay think they can evade & avoid this topic is that the individual postage receipts are Royal Mail generated and thus not directly created by eBay.  Where eBay get this wrong is that they are the one making the charge to us, ie assuming the resposiblity for the cost + vat, and so ought to showing Vat as a charge on the Financial Statement and the monthly invoice. 

I've opted not to lose a lot of sleep over this. Life being too short and all that.

 

[chel_35]

question - Is VAT chargeable on Royal Mail parcels within the UK?  Im a private seller and this evening found out that my buyer who wanted to combine postage has miraculously been charged VAT on the Postage Cost.  Never heard of this before and according to VAT website its not applicable to Royal Mail postage??

I contacted ebay and they tried to say it was a VAT charge on the item, which it cant be because the figures dont add up.  Also, if a buyer is going to have to pay VAT on items or P&P should it not state that in the prices.  Im pretty sure from what I read their prices are "inclusive" None of it makes sense to me and whilst it was less than £1 its the principle, for some buyers that could end up many £'s...  Plus I dont like being told one thing then another then another - it just dosent seem right to me.  

[chel_35]

and ironically the difference in price of what the buyer should have paid and what she was charged worked out to exactly the same amount as the difference between  a simple delivery large letter and small parcel.  strange that