[ic] Tax Problems

[Lyn St George]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 15:54:53 +0100, Mark Bryant wrote:

>
>Actually that's not quite true - Well not according to my local UK VAT 
>office, whom I checked with before i started out and hope would know what 
>they are talking about where UK VAT is concerned :o)

Hmm .. my local UK HMCE office told me something a little different. 
Don't you just love bureaucrats?

They said that they have different categories of goods and services, 
and for the category I specifically asked about (I run an Interchange 
hosting and consulting business) I could safely assume that the end
users were businesses and they did not have to prove it. 

I believe it would be correct though that in cases where there may be 
doubt as to whether the end use is personal or business, then you 
would need to obtain proof in the form of a valid VAT number. I also 
enquired as to some formula which could be used to determine the
validity of a VAT number, but it turns out that every country has 
different formats, Ireland even has 2 valid formats, and they claimed 
to know of nothing beyond their paper tables for checking this. This was
quite some time ago, maybe things have changed ..

>Anyway, they say:
>
>All sales to EEC countries are charged 17.5% VAT on sales FROM the UK (for 
>delivery in the EEC) UNLESS the purchaser is a company AND provides a VAT 
>(or equivalent) number at point of sale. If the VAT number is provided, 
>then the VAT is rated at 0% and the VAT/TAX that the purchasing company now 
>"owes" is obtained by the taxation system in their local country. If a VAT 
>registered company fails to provide their VAT/TAX number at point of sale 
>they are to be taxed at 17.5% like a normal domestic sale within the EEC.

Yes, in fact my notes agree with this rate: "same rate as that pertaining in 
the country being shipped/sold from"

>The tax office offered me 2 URLS where this is allegedly explained in more 
>detail and they concur with the above.
>
>Domestic sales from UK to EEC countries
>http://www.hmce.gov.uk/business/tradinginternet/tradinter-15.htm
>
>Business (VAT registered companies) sales from UK to EEC countries
>http://www.hmce.gov.uk/business/tradinginternet/tradinter-16.htm

I don't recall these being available last time I did any VAT work - they
look very useful.

>>  - put the rates into salestax.asc, with tax set to 'country'.

This is my salestax.asc (tab separated)
================
country	rate
UK	0.175
=================
and in catalog.cgf:
=============
SalesTax         country
=================

-
Cheers
Lyn St George
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