India is tightening up their requirements for online sellers stipulation that everyone must register for Goods and Services Tax (GST) if they sell on online marketplaces from the 1st of July 2017.
For eBay, this means eBay India will need a Goods and Services Tax Identification Number (GSTIN) for every registered seller when the ruling comes into force. New sellers on eBay India will now need to register their GSTIN before they can start selling. Existing sellers will need to register their GSTIN with eBay India by the 25th of June 2017, although eBay recommend that you do so as soon as possible.
If you don’t register in time then your PaisaPay account will be suspended and you won’t be able to sell on eBay India until you get your paperwork in order.
What’s interesting here is that in India you don’t have to have a GSTIN until your turnover is INR 20 lakhs (about £24,500). India have made a ruling that if you sell goods or services on an online marketplace they everyone will be required to register regardless of the normal threshold.
Should all UK seller register for VAT?
This set me wondering what would happen if every seller on UK marketplaces were forced to register for VAT regardless of turnover and if they had any VAT to pay. It would instantly give HMRC your total online turnover from all marketplaces and no one would be able to sell without registering their VAT number. Of course it still wouldn’t stop fraudsters ‘borrowing’ someone else’s VAT number, but it would soon come to light when HMRC started chasing a seller for any VAT that was due.
6 Responses
This VAT thing is a red herring.
As it stands in the UK, you have to declare any profit made from trading, online or otherwise, from £1 upwards. You then get exemption from tax if you are below the treshholds.
Why on earth embroil millions of under-the-tax-threshold “businesses” in the VAT system?
Are you mad?
As for the tax avoidance thing again, HMRC recevies reports from Amazon and Ebay on all activity for everybody. If you’ve sold anything on A,, or E.. then HMRC have the figures.
Whether they have the manpower to follow that up is another question entirely.
We’ve had a shakedown ourselves and been shown the report Ebay sent to HMRC about us. It was wrong! Hence the shakedown for an alleged 40 grand under-declaration.
This country should take small businesses OUT of vat altogether.
It should be set at something realistic like 500,000 turnover.
It’s a joke that taxi drivers, small corner shops, little online hobby businesses are all forced to become unpaid tax collectors for HMG.
Everyone selling on eBay should have a VAT number then the system should be set as it is activated or not. This would stop all the back room sellers that make a living while their partner is at work Monday to Friday and also claiming working tax credits.
This way eBay should ask for any sellers VAT number activated or not then HMRC would know when they are trading on eBay.
lots of ltd companies are not VAT registered and are not required to be. A company number on ebay/amazon would make sense but VAT is a completely different tax.
I simply dont understand why Ebay and Amazon dont demand your Vat details once you go over the threshold. What could be simpler than that and then display them for all to see.
NO Vat supplied details results in account suspended until provided
Instead of worrying about people cheating the system or how many people would get sucked in to VAT for no good reason, we’d be better off to get rid of VAT altogether.
Whatever revenue it brings in to the country coffers could be brought in through an increase in income tax instead. While doing that, national insurance should be merged with income tax too.
Hello,has anyone suffered this please ?
It seems related to the fact that I listed an item directly on eBay.in. ONE item for 30 days,as a test. It went live. 7 days after,I received mail saying I was to delete the listing and confirm I had done so. Why I don’t know,but all this was done within minutes. A few days later the fireworks started. I could not modify any listing until I had proven my commercial registry,I had to show invoices for the products I am selling … Absurd demands kept me running. I thought it had calmed down but today all my listings have been sent to unsold items,some had been on auto-renew for 10 years ! My shop is empty ! Two messages,two phone calls,not the slightest explanation ! No warning was given ! I am considering calling a lawyer