Vat for imported goods and sell in the UK

Hello My friend runs a small company. The company imports goods from outside the UK and then sells them to a Middleman based in America. However, the goods are kept stored in the UK warehouse. This middleman sells the goods to an American company, which sells them only in the UK on Amazon. So, this American company collects the goods from the UK warehouse directly. The turnover of my friend's company is over £100,000. My question is if the company needs to register VAT ? When issuing the sales invoices to American middlemen, does Vat need to be added? Thanks Grace

The UK company imports goods into the UK, so this must mean the UK company is the owner of these goods when they enter the UK. The UK company then "sells" these goods to USA company, as the goods have not left the UK at this point then UK company is making a UK sale of goods and those sales count towards VAT threshold, UK company probably needs to register for VAT. You make reference to UK company being a middleman, but that means nothing in this transaction, UK company is either an agent or a principal and as UK company is the importer of the goods, then UK company is principal when it sells the goods to USA, so UK company is buying in goods and selling them on to USA even though the goods don't physically move from the UK warehouse the ownership does (UK sells to USA whilst goods remain in UK). USA company will also need to register for VAT because USA company owns goods physically in the UK and makes sales in the UK, USA company is not UK resident/not UK based, VAT threshold for USA company is Nil, USA company must register from the very first sale it makes. Amazon will likely not allow the USA company to sell on their platform without a VAT registration. You should probably seek advice from an Accountant because that setup is not super efficient but does work, you could perhaps look at UK company being a pure agent charging a commission and the USA company being the importer of the goods but that would mean USA company would see the original price charged by the overseas supplier and I'm guessing the UK doesn't want the USA to see how much UK is importing the goods for and how much UK is marking up the goods. There are other ways to structure the transactions to be more efficient but this forum does not give such advice.

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