EU Selling with upcoming VAT changes

That’s still valid after July 1st? Here the prices drop significantly by then.

My orders from Europe are drying up. So far there is no mechanism in place for Tindie. Not sure what they are going to do but it won’t be a global marketplace anymore. I get plenty of orders from the US and Canada but I really enjoyed working with my UK and Europe customers. Shame.

@protoart: Yes having a hub can also been the solution but mean that have to be imported in one shoot to decrease cost on regular basis ( I do that long time ago (more than 25y) doing transhipping : we group all orders from one country to one contry then share cost but this is “easy” to do when you have enough good every time.

Wish seem to organize in that way, you send you parcel to their HUB they send all in one shot to oversea and do custom clearance then send each parcel to final customer.

@f2a4e6a0 : right VAT you cannot escape anymore (as customer you where subject to go to tax bureau by yourself before to paid VAT for your importation…but people “forget” to go )
YES the real problem is crazy price that already appear for some shipping company on arrival that charge 30 Euro to 50 Euro for service (plus VAT) several shipment I do those last month have been charged to my cutomer

@protoart, yes the fee will be the same for all shipment not declared in advance :frowning: So the only option really is to only buy from places that c support payment of VAT upfront…

Well, this is the option I’m going with. For many of us on Tindie, these sales aren’t a “livelihood”, more of a “profitable hobby”. Its bad enough that I have to already deal with handling sales tax myself in the US (got a stern warning from the California franchise tax board a few years back), I am not going to accept the administrative overhead of managing tax accounts for every country in the world (a directional exaggeration to make a point). I’ll stop selling before I have to deal with that crap. It’d be great if Tindie was a fuller service platform … I’d even be OK with a higher fee for that (remember “profitable hobby”). But Tindie is not helpful here, and I don’t have the time or will to do all the work needed so the EU can collect the pittance they would get from my sales.

I also ship many packages to Europe and a couple of weeks ago looked into how much it would cost to use a “VAT intermediary” to pay on my behalf.
Prices start from about 800€ to 1500€ annually for less than 200 packages, which is crazy for small sellers and specially considering that this only applies to shipments up to 150€

Probably 50% of my sales are above that threshold and in that case the customers need to pay VAT, import duties and administration fees regardless if I’m selling through Tindie (marketplace) or directly. So I quickly gave up on that idea.

An alternative which has always been available is to open an account with UPS, DHL or Fedex and charge VAT to that account so that the customer doesn’t need to pay anything (you would need to increase sale price obviously). But at that range <150€ shipping cost starts to be a big issue.
So yeah not easy to find an ideal solution.

Dan

That sounds very much like the kpmg pricing, i looked at them also as well as other firms. I tried to register direct for IOSS with Ireland also but was unable as the Intermediary is the only solution with the UK not having a tax agreement with the EU. Taxamo is a more cost effective solution and will charge a handling fee of £2 per sale so not quite as prohibitive but it’s via an API so integration must be done yourself and in the case of tindie there would be no way to incorporate this. Also i think with Tindie not displaying/invoicing users with pricing including VAT it is not suitable also. I also have a personal woocommerce store and taxamo have a plugin available which is $79 annually so i may have to switch all my sales for the EU over to there which is a shame that you lose the eyes on your product that tindie would normally bring in but then your also not having to pay tindie.

I also worry that TINDIE don’t care so much about sales in UK and Europe. Ebay is also changing their policy and push to register with Payonner instead of PayPal in the same time…bad period !

@plop211 : can you, please, give me some more detail about your shop (maybe URL) and Taxamo

The “good” thing with TINDIE is that you just need to change in shipping and remove EU and UK from the list :wink:
I just do that now…no more sales in those area now !

Well today is D day and no mention from Tindie, it is really quite a poor effort.

You have to know that this is parcel entry in EU that is considered not the sale date, mean that form now all parcel are subjected to be VAT addes to your customer…good luck and thanks TINDIE for your support to all of us that bring you the business :wink:

For us about half of sales go into EU countries - so if that is not sorted out, we’ll be forced to use other platforms as well. Luckily right now we are out of stock anyway and new batch is in production - but it will be ready soon…

It seems tindie doesnt care… so for us buyers it will probably be more convenient if you sell using ebay utilizing Global Shipping programme, as that handles tax - or create an AliExpress store, as they has implemented payment as part of the purchase process now.

@jasminebrackett : what the news…no comments ?

For some of the guys who decide to stop selling from US -> EU:

Did you know something similar is already happening from EU -> US for some states? If you sell >x.xx amount to one state you officially have to directly pay tax to the state when outside of the US.

Other than that. The only real difference here is that for every item imported -no matter the value- the receiver will have to pay VAT+handing charges.

Instead of saying that you stop selling to your customer, why not just inform them clearly about the import rules(which they basically should be aware of anyway, even before July 1st).

Some countries lowered the handling charges a lot(I am just paying 4 euro). So why not have your customer decide if they want to pay these costs or not? These costs are transparent and are no hidden costs.

How does it work? It’s hard to find some exact info on what would happen with non-IOSS packages - it seems to be dependent on the company handling shipment, for example Fedex seems to take 30% of VAT (but not less than 5 euro) + something for processing it in the first place, but it’s not really clear from the description.
I mean yes, selling for $60 + having another $30 in taxes and handling may be still fine but how to be sure about exact amount and clearance time? (all those mentions than non-IOSS would be manually processed and are subject of long clearance process sound not so great)

I wouldn’t worry too much about it to be honest.
Packages with no IOSS will not be rejected automatically, they will simply be handled in the same way as anything above 22€ up until now, just remember to enclose a proper invoice (3 copies) and preferably with an HS number and country of origin in the description.

From what I gather there’s a lot of US sellers here and I can tell you guys aren’t used to having to pay the Fedex/UPS driver in order to release your package.
But for almost anyone else abroad (I’m in Mexico) we’re already used to having to pay added taxes, VAT, admin fees, etc for even the cheapest gadget from China.
So when I see the price online I know I will end up paying more and I will not complain to the seller when it happens.

What I recommend you do is to keep offering shipping to Europe, and just add a little message in the Europe-region shipping options like: “VAT not included, may delay at customs” it should be enough indication that they’ll need to pay extra eventually.
It’s not perfect I know, but hopefully it’s only temporary and Tindie will soon offer the chance to collect VAT (fingers crossed!)

Here’s some reading material from UPS and DHL

According to UPS documents, VAT on shipments below 150 eur must be paid by sender - which means that unit price for sending to EU (where VAT is paid by seller) must be higher than for sending to non-EU countries (where VAT is paid by buyer), and that requires certain functionality of Tindie store. Although Fedex seems to be able to charge buyer for that same tax. Right now it looks like quite a mess…

I think what a lot of people are missing is that while there are ways around it (I’ve took the route to say I’m posting zero vat so the customer is responsible for any local fees) the real issue is that as Tindie is a marketplace they are legally obliged to collected the vat at source when the sale is made and then handle sending that to the EU. This is not a nice to have or a request but a legal obligation so they will begin to run into trouble. A key point also is that as mentioned in the last few messages there are a lot more ways to send than simple regular post. Yes the fees by domestic carries such as PostNL have reduced their charges to 4 euros and made it easier to pay but that only covers their packages. Fedex/UPS/DHL can set their own charges for handling the package and releasing it. I have experience with Fedex and they are especially expensive. To sum up this is a situation that could have easily been avoided as this was on the cards for years and Tindie are taking our money on every sale we make and as well as covering hosting/development etc it should also cover putting things in place for legal requirements like the new UK and EU vat changes. The likes of aliexpress/ebay/ETSY and amazon all had systems in from day one.

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I can’t agree more. I’m just trying to approach this in a pragmatic way.