VAT registration

[elfb9223]

I have been contacted by EBay to provide my VAT registration documents within the next 30 days or my account will be restricted

i have sold on EBay for 4 years and have always kept my sales under the VAT Threshold 

I have discussed this with my accountant who is daunting I do not need to register for

VAT

just wondering if any body else has encountered this issue and any resolutions .

thank you 

[cernak.m]

I might mention it here as well:

So far, these are my findings on why this is a glitch and needs to be addressed:

I would be glad if anyone can help or raise this issue to the people involved.

I received the same email, asking me to upload UK VAT, despite being an overseas seller from Slovakia, having all the goods in Slovakia, and shipping only from here.

My understanding from the UK GOV website on who needs UK VAT registration when selling on any marketplace is that you are only required to have UK VAT if your stock is in the UK at the point of sale (which mine and others affected are not).

From the eBay help site:
In practice, the following situations will normally trigger mandatory VAT registration in the UK or the EU:
2. Sales of goods from a local warehouse, by a non-resident seller (forward deployed inventory).

The Location Glitch:
All my listings are always set for location in Poprad, Slovakia – I never changed that.

Now, I noticed that some of my listings, when I try to revise them, show an error message saying:

"Your item Location indicates that your item is in the United Kingdom, but you've chosen a postage service that posts from outside the UK."

In these cases, my postage settings are correct, just as I’ve always had them, but the item location has been changed by eBay – the glitch – to the United Kingdom!

This location glitch is most likely what’s triggering the UK VAT requirement email.

For example, I missed one of these errors, and 1 of my 4,300 listings was set as "Item location: Poprad, United Kingdom" instead of Slovakia, as @4_bathrooms  helpfully noticed – this most likely triggered the email for me.

Now, the concerning part is that when I was about to bulk update some of my listings, 43 out of 2,000 received the same error, even though the revision I was doing  didn’t affect the shipping or item location parameters. 

See the attached images with the error in the bulk edit tool and other showing the current listing with the correct (current) location.

When you filter my listings, you will see that none of them have the location set to the UK, yet eBay, somewhere in their database, seems to think some of them are located in the UK, which is invisible to me until the point of listing revision.

Now, I’m guessing here, but this database issue is most likely connected to the UK VAT registration trigger, which sends the automatic email asking for UK VAT.

Clearly, this is a glitch that can create a lot of issues for honest overseas sellers, as it can result in account suspension.

Is there anyone who can help spread this issue so it gets resolved?

I can imagine this has happened to many others as well.
Martin

[prisonerofstylee]

Does anyone know if after a month I still haven't added the VAT number, what restrictions might await me, will I not be able to sell only on ebay.co.uk or also on ebay.com?

[myriad*seller]

The restrictions will be you will not be able to list any more items 

eBay may remove your other items

You need to request a call back at 8am local time to speak to customer service in Dublin who could actually sort this out for you, but I'm sorry I am not sure how you can do that from Ukraine 

[sml192]

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@cernak.m wrote:

I received the same email, asking me to upload UK VAT, despite being an overseas seller from Slovakia, having all the goods in Slovakia, and shipping only from here.

My understanding from the UK GOV website on who needs UK VAT registration when selling on any marketplace is that you are only required to have UK VAT if your stock is in the UK at the point of sale (which mine and others affected are not).

---

Yes, that is correct, overseas sellers only need to register for UK VAT if they hold stock in the UK or are selling direct to consumers. 

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@cernak.m wrote:

This location glitch is most likely what’s triggering the UK VAT requirement email.

For example, I missed one of these errors, and 1 of my 4,300 listings was set as "Item location: Poprad, United Kingdom" instead of Slovakia, as @4_bathrooms  helpfully noticed – this most likely triggered the email for me.

---

Actually, it was me that noticed your erroneous listing, but I don't really mind you giving the credit to @4_bathrooms.

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@cernak.m wrote:

When you filter my listings, you will see that none of them have the location set to the UK, yet eBay, somewhere in their database, seems to think some of them are located in the UK, which is invisible to me until the point of listing revision.

Now, I’m guessing here, but this database issue is most likely connected to the UK VAT registration trigger, which sends the automatic email asking for UK VAT.

Clearly, this is a glitch that can create a lot of issues for honest overseas sellers, as it can result in account suspension.

Is there anyone who can help spread this issue so it gets resolved?

I can imagine this has happened to many others as well.

---

It's definitely a glitch caused by the location issue you have outlined and obviously very frustrating for those caught up in it.   Marco and Dave from the eBay Community Team have been tagged in to the other thread on the subject so hopefully they will be to provide some advice and feed back to the relevant people within eBay. 

[cernak.m]

@sml192 so sorry, dont know, how I mismatched you.

Thank for your time and reply.

[sml192]

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@cernak.m wrote:

@sml192 so sorry, dont know, how I mismatched you.

Thank for your time and reply.

---

No problem, easy to lose track when lots of people are cross posting at the same time. 

[cernak.m]

So the location glitch happned again!

Yesterday I spent all night bulk editing item location to Slovakia, just in case to be sure all litings are marked as located in Slovakia (as they always were beofre the glitch).

I received several location errors, I mentioned and explained above in my previous message, so in order to fix the error I updated them again to Slovakia and the error went away.

Today I am checking my lsitings again, for the location and 31 of them have location changed to UNITED KINDOM!

See attached image. (Meanwhile I am going to change this listings back to Slovakia, as they should have stayed)

This is nonsese, this glitch is way to important to be overlooked.

Its randomly changing listings location to UK resulting in UK VAT requairement email

marco@ebay 

dave@ebay 

Can you, please look at this glitch, this issue.

Forward it to people responsible.

Its effecting whole accounts with the result of suspension!

[pt_baix]

the exact same thing is happening to me. i'm from portugal and i stock in portugal. i got this email too

[sml192]

Item no. 387412764280 is incorrectly showing as located in Lisboa, United Kingdom. 

As with the other posters in this thread that will be what has triggered the email that you have received.

I don't think a solution has been found yet but you do need to remove or edit that listing. 

[pt_baix]

This is their mistake because I never put the item as a UK location. I've already changed it to Portugal. I really don't know why this is happening

[cernak.m]

Does any of you effected use ebaymag tool?

[prisonerofstylee]

Yes i use ebaymag.

[cernak.m]

what about you @pt_baix ?

I am asking because I am using it too and I found one of my lsiting on ebaymag beeing marked as US item location - which wrong of course.

I found it by rundom, just checking my error listings on ebaymag.

That made me thinking this whole debakel with item location can have something to do with ebaymag, because why otherwise here on UK some listings are marked as UK location, while on ebaymag for my listings I want to list to US is suddenly US location for a different listing.

You are not even able to change the item location on ebaymag by yourself, so it must be some system wrong doing, changing listing to US location and if it can do that, maybe it can change original listings to UK location too.

It would be good for the people effected also using ebaymag to write to their customer support informing them about this issue.

I already send them a message, but more people rising the issue to ebaymag team should help.

[pt_baix]

i don't use ebaymag. this is certainly due to some bug in ebay's system. because last weekend when i placed a new ad for sale from one of my listings in the sell similar part, when i finalized the listing, this error appeared: i was listing an item located in the united kingdom but the shipment was from portugal and this warning appeared in red. but i never listed any items for sale located in the united kingdom. ebay had to have placed those ads automatically. it was certainly a mistake. i sent a message to support on friday and they still haven't gotten back to me.

[pt_baix]

Thank you for contacting eBay Customer Service.

I understand that you received an email regarding the UK Value Added Tax (VAT) information on your account, and I appreciate you taking the time to clarify the situation.

It sounds like the notification was triggered due to an item mistakenly listed with a UK location, which you have promptly corrected.

I'm here to assist you in ensuring everything is set right.

Since you are based in Portugal and your items are located and shipped from there, you are correct in your understanding that you do not need to register for VAT in the UK if your stock is not in the UK at the point of sale.

This aligns with the information provided on both the gov.uk website and eBay's VAT policy.

If you sell goods in the EU or the UK, you may be required to register for value added tax (VAT) and collect VAT on the sale.

If you are a non-UK or EU seller with goods in the UK or EU, or if you sell goods to the UK or EU, eBay will charge VAT in certain circumstances.

Please ensure that no other listings mistakenly indicate a UK location to avoid similar notifications in the future. If you have any listings that are outside of Portugal, you would not need to register for VAT in those countries

You can find more information about VAT and here is the link: https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling/vat-obligations-eu?id=4650

I appreciate the opportunity to resolve this concern for you today.

Thank you for contacting eBay, have a wonderful day.

Best Regards,

[4_bathrooms]

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@pt_baix wrote:

Please ensure that no other listings mistakenly indicate a UK location to avoid similar notifications in the future.

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So, according to that extremely patronising eBay reply it's your fault it happened. "There's no glitch here; it's working as designed..."

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@pt_baix wrote:

If you have any listings that are outside of Portugal, you would not need to register for VAT in those countries

---

That statement is wholly incorrect where stock held in any other EU country or the UK would be concerned. Yet another fine example of the exemplary advice given out by an eBay customer service rep attempting to regurgitate what is shown on their screen instead of actually trying to understand and solve the problem. 

[pt_baix]

You're absolutely right. They contradict themselves

I'm going to ask again and see if he's removed any restrictions automatically scheduled by the system on the account in 30 days' time. Ask him if he just replied and didn't fix anything in the system

.

[tilly.matt221]

Hi!

I`m a private seller from Slovakia and I have the same issue since September. When I try to re-list my items (which were previously listed as Location: Bratislava, Slovakia) I get an red banner stating that the location is wrong, and indeed, it is changed to Bratislava, United Kingdom.

I reported that twice to ebay, they promissed to have a look at it, but nothing happened yet. Did you report it to ebay as well? Any answer?

[cernak.m]

@tilly.matt221 Everyone here has already reported it too, but so far there have only been vague answers, like the team knows about it and is working to resolve it.

It is clear, however, that the "item location" is still broken. Just now, I tried to use advanced search, where I selected your username and location "UK only," and it showed me 60 of your listings, although all of them are located in Bratislava, Slovakia, if you inspect the listings.

Making the same search but changing the location from "UK only" to "EU"—which is where you are—I get 0 results with the message "60 items found from eBay international sellers," and then your listings appear.

This indicates, in my opinion, that eBay is still somehow thinking your stock is in the UK, which resulted in the error messages and the UK VAT requirement message, which was automatically triggered by the UK location.

Now, I think they know about the issue and that some sellers were affected. What is not clear, however, and what is most important, is that I have had no message from them stating that they know the error is on their side, that the UK VAT requirement was triggered by mistake, and that I should not worry about it, as I will not be impacted by it.

I am worried that they will solve the location issue, but forget to remove us from the UK VAT list—this would be the worst-case scenario, and I hope it never comes to that...

Asked several times for help, maybe this time will work:
kat@ebay 
dave@ebay 

marco@ebay 

Can you help to lok at the isse? We are still in the dark and this can result to the many sellers accounts suspension because of the error on eBay side.

Please help

[tilly.matt221]

I just realized that the ebay tracking info next to my sold items is 'broken' too. It says 'Item leaving the United Kingdom' instead of 'Item leaving Slovakia / Overseas' as it used to be.

I just had a message from a UK buyer who asked me to refund him, claiming that I posted his item to the wrong country. I explained the situation to him and managed to calm him down, but I expect more messages like this from other buyers...

I will try to contact ebay tomorrow morning again.