Amazon and eBay face crackdown over VAT fraud by overseas sellers | Politics | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... as-sellers

It's a bit different with eBay in that they aren't storing the items, but then Amazon aren't always doing that either... I don't know much about the VAT system at all, but I love how our tax officials are getting bent out of shape about this when it's the global company equivalent of paying a plumber in cash. Amazon for one is doing much worse when it comes to taxes ffs.

We have a lot of problems with UK based sellers on the Germany Amazon portal, as they often won't give us a VAT invoice or their VAT number - that is something they are required to give for all sales in Germany. We have had to return a couple of items. Chinese no-name products coming direct from China are also a problem.

Now we actually check the seller's page before each order, if the item doesn't come directly from Amazon. If they aren't in Germany and they don't show a VAT number on their seller's profile, then we look elsewhere for the product.

The problem there is that there is no legal requirement for someone in the UK to be VAT registered provided their turnover is below £82K

And if you sell in Germany for more than 0c in a year, you need to be registered in Germany.

The requirement for digital products is that, really, yes you should be. If you sell BigD an MP3 of your band which plays pubs and clubs for 99p, you need to register for VAT in Germany and pay VAT on that, or register for VAT her and use VATMOSS. You have to pay VAT in the country the buyer is now, instead of where the seller is. The rumblings I'm hearing is that eventually, this will be rolled out to physical products.

If you are a business, here in Germany, you need a VAT invoice for every purchase. That means that all products we buy via eBay and Amazon also need a VAT invoice and that is the rub at the moment, as UK sellers are often too small and aren't registered, which means we have to send the goods back and look for an alternative supplier.