Amazon are displaying a note about tax disclosures on seller dashboards, informing them that their sales data may be handed over to HMRC.
This is nothing new and assuming you’re in the majority of sellers who are already submitting your tax returns and paying your dues you’ve nothing to worry about. All we’ve seen so far is HMRC contacting sellers but being too lazy to cross reference seller information with tax records so in the main hitting sellers who are up to date with the tax returns.
What is interesting is that it’s not just eBay coming under scrutiny at the moment. Of course this also depends on the seller coming to the attention of HMRC in the first place. On eBay all that appears to have happened is HMRC contacting business sellers asking if they’d paid their tax whilst ignoring businesses masquerading as private sellers who are more likely to have undeclared income.
Here’s the note that Amazon are displaying:
Important information about new UK tax legislation
17 Feb 2015
Under new UK tax legislation, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) may, upon request, oblige Amazon to disclose to HMRC data we hold in relation to sellers with a potential UK tax liability. The data request may include seller contact information and transaction data. For more information, see https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/1811/contents/made.
7 Responses
How very honest of them; how much corporation tax did they pay last year in the UK? Oh, that’s right £4.2 million on UK revenue of £4.3 BILLION equating to 0.1% (source: Guardian, 2014). Not that any business shouldn’t pay tax, but I think I can see where the focus should be here, given we hear so much about HRMC’s limited resources…..
Does that mean that they are going to be handing over their own data too?
At least it’s a start. HMRC should take note of the German Vat enforcement agency – Finanzat
Apparently last year quite a few UK sellers were sent hefty Vat demands after using FBA Germany – Finanzat used the same Eu regulations to get sales data.
HMRC needs to do some serious catching up with the new age of global ecommerce & vat evasion hitting our shores.