Jay Cooke

1. Business owner not UK resident. 2 Using a virtual office in the UK. On those two answers alone, this would indicate the business is not established in the UK for VAT purposes. An Amazon warehouse is not a UK establishment, even if you rented a third party warehouse for your stock, the people at the warehouse are not your employees, you have no employees in the UK, you have no management or control in the UK. Amazon employees are not your employees, you do not control them or pay their salaries. If you are saying your business is established at an Amazon warehouse, then if you are established in the UK, HMRC should be able to come and visit the Amazon warehouse and meet your business owner and the employees of your business and to inspect your business records and interview the Director at the Amazon warehouse....,.because this is what HMRC does for UK established businesses, it performs random VAT inspections and will send HMRC officers to the address and expect to meet the business owner at that address. Is that really going to be the situation with you? No, it is not. You do not keep your business records at Amazon warehouse, you do not have any employees at the Amazon warehouse, you do not have any management or decision makers based at the Amazon warehouse, if HMRC arrived at the Amazon warehouse to inspect YOUR business records and interview your business owner, Amazon security would turn HMRC away because your business is not based, established or operating from the Amazon warehouse. You have misunderstood the guidance, when HMRC refer to the UK address being able to receive business supplies, it is not referring to stock from China, it is referring to receiving the sort of supplies a business with an establishment in the UK would receive, such as gas and electricity, deliveries of printer cartridges for the office printer, deliveries of paper for the printer, customers walking in off the street to buy something, where employees can have personal deliveries received, etc....the sort of thing that only happens in an office or factory where there are bosses, employees and where those employees might need a new desk or laptop and where orders for a new desk or laptop are delivered so that the employee can use the desk or laptop. The above cannot be achieved from a virtual office or from an Amazon warehouse. Amazon is not YOUR establishment and never will be. Your business cannot benefit from the £90k threshold and should be registered from VAT from the very first sale ever made in the UK from the Amazon warehouse. Amazon are very good at identifying business with virtual address pretending to be UK established, at some point Amazon will identify your business and Amazon will stop any future sales on their platform and Amazon will also seek retrospective VAT from you before they let you back onto the platform, so it is better to fix this yourself because if you wait for Amazon, they will not be friendly.

Or you could go to your government gateway, go to "manage VAT services" and there are menu options to see what payments were made and on what date. Do you not have bank statements that confirm payment has gone from your bank account to HMRC?

Can I just add that "sales and letting business" suggest the property is to be rented out to tenants and not occupied by the owner. For there to be a ToGC, the buyer must be in the same VAT position as the seller, if the seller is charging VAT on the sale of the property then this suggests the seller has opted to tax the property (else, I would question why the seller is charging VAT on a commercial property as sale of commercial property is exempt unless there is an option to tax notified to HMRC or if the property is less than 3 years old). So assuming there is an option to tax on the property, for ToGC, it means the buyer must also opt to tax the property (and register for VAT). If the buyer does not opt to tax the property, then it may not be a ToGC and the sale will be plus VAT. If the buyer does opt to tax, at the time the buyer deregister for VAT, they will be required to pay output tax on the market value of the property at time of deregistration, so yes, the buyer can deregister for VAT once they've bought the property, but then they'll have to pay 20% output tax to HMRC on the MV of the property. This assumes the buyer opts to tax the property, if the buyer doesn't opt to tax the property, then the property cannot be purchased as a ToGC and the seller should charge VAT. HMRC monitor land registry records, so when the property changes ownership, HMRC will likely contact both the buyer and the seller, so you need to get this right. To be honest, this sort of query should be being dealt with by accountants, this is not the sort of query to ask HMRC as there is far too many missing details and facts, it might be that the specific facts of the situation mean that you can deregister and there was no requirement for an option to tax, but as none of these details are here on this forum, then it is literally impossible to give a correct answer to your query.

" I don't even know the figures to file and pay" Why do you not know the figure? This is your business, you have registered for VAT back to 2021, you must know what the value of your sales were from 2021, 2022, 20223, 2024? I presume what the situation is is that you've been making sales since 2021, under the VAT threshold and so you've been billing your customer without VAT because you were not VAT registered. For example, for the whole of 2021 you invoiced £30,000 to Amazon or Evri and you got paid £30,000 for the whole year and this is the turnover you declared to HMRC on your self assessment return. Fast forward to today, you registered for VAT but backdated it to 2021, so back in 2021 you invoiced £30,000 of sales (as per my example). If you are not on the flat rate scheme then you take the turnover of £30,000 and multiply by 20% = £6,000 and so you today raise an invoice to Amazon/Evri for £6,000 VAT only with an invoice description of "VAT only invoice, charged in relation to my historical sales made in 2021 which was £30,000 before VAT". You invoice Amazon/Evri for £6,000 and you now owe HMRC £6,000 and hopefully Amazon/Eri will pay you the £6,000 and you pay HMRC £6,000 If you are on the flat rate scheme, then the £30,0000 is already invoiced back in 2021, the VAT only invoice you raise today is still at 20% (£6,000) but you only pay 10% of the gross value to HMRC, so we take the original £30,000 plus the £6,000 VAT = £36,000 (gross value) and 10% of this is £36,000 x 10% = £3,600 and so you owe £3,600 to HMRC...and the difference between what you invoice Amazon/Evri (£6,000) minus what you owe HMRC under flat rate (£3,600) is £2,400 which is the benefit from using flat rate scheme, but then you cannot reclaim any VAT on your running costs such as fuel, van hire, general running costs. If you file a Nil VAT return when you actually owe HMRC £3,600 (or £6,000 seeing as you have not registered for flat rate scheme), then you potentially now have a penalty situation for filing an incorrect VAT return (careless penalty). VAT is not a simple thing and you have registered for VAT and back dated that to 2021, this is a high risk strategy if you get it wrong (which you have), you failed to register for flat rate scheme and you may now only be able to register for flat rate from a current date and not the historical period, this then makes the whole point of registering for VAT and using the flat rate scheme a bit redundant. Please, engage with an Accountant or low price book-keeping firm and get them to help you before you make more error, this forum is about to close forever and you will have no easy mechanism to get assistance, the VAT helplines do not give advice on how to run your business and will only be able to quote the legislation and guidance, so you will be on your own and without knowing what you are doing you will end up with penalties and liabilities.

Depends what your UK address is. You cannot use a virtual office, PO box or an Accountants address, nor can you use a home address unless you are resident at that address. So if you are using any of the above address types, HMRC will not accept them. If you are now UK resident and no longer resident in France, then you should be able to change the address via your government gateway, If you are saying there is a mismatch between the VAT return address and the address shown on the VAT checker, then the best thing to do is go to the online web checker, enter your VAT number and proceed to the screen where it shows the wrong/Ruby address. Take a screenshot of this page and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and there is a link "Problem with this page?", click on that and you will see a form you can fill, explain what the problem is (wrong address), press submit and someone from IT helpdesk will be in touch to ask for a screenshot and then they should be able to fix the database mismatch. Don't register for VAT again, because then you will have two VAT numbers (or HMRC will reject your application on the basis you are already registered) and that will be very confusing, so stick with fixing the address issue.

If the venue is a genuine agent, then the ticket sales do not belong to them/the ticket sales are not their turnover, if they have charged VAT on ticket sales then they are acting as principal (selling in their own name rather than selling as an agent on behalf of the band). The agent can of course handle sales and collect monies into their agent/client account but this is not their money, the agent will want to control everything like ticket sales and collecting the money because that way they control the process, they can see exactly what number of tickets are sold and so they can calculate their commission (30%) and only their commission is subject to VAT (because they would invoice you for 30% of ticket sales plus VAT as they are VAT registered, but the remaining 70% is yours and you are not VAT registered.) This is really a contractual matter. If contract just said 70/30 split then that is open to interpretation as to 70/30 of what? Agents tend not to take on any risk, so if the agent is paying for the venue and hire of equipment and marketing and are at risk of not getting paid (ie, agent pays all these costs but then only sells one ticket) then the agent is possibly more likely a principal selling in their own name as they have all the risk, whereas an agent may incur some incidental costs but if no tickets are sold their only loss is their commission, whereas the band will earn nothing and will have expended costs on transport, venue hire, etc. If they are selling as principle, then the tickets sales will be plus VAT as it is the venue making the sale direct, not on behalf of the band, so if they are charging VAT on tickets sales that could be correct if there is a lack of detail as to whether they are an agent or a principal. So I think your logic is right, but with a sketchy contract/email only agreement then maybe a polite approach and explanation is the best way forwards, if the venue agrees then they are no worse off, they credit note the VAT they charged in error and they give that back to you/they get it back from HMRC, they then take their 30% fee from the ticket sales plus VAT and you get the remaining 70% without VAT. Think of it like Ticketmaster, they don't buy in tickets for a concert and then are stuck if nobody buys them, they merely list events and sell on behalf of the promotor/band, Ticketmaster charge the customer £10 for this and also charge the promotor a fee, the customer pays ticket master £100 for the ticket + £10 admin fee, the £100 is nothing to do with Ticketmaster, they just handle the transaction through their bank to make sure the buyer is legit and pays the right amount/no chargebacks, etc and then transfers the £100 direct to the promotor (minus their commission).

The supplier is meant/required to re-issue their invoice to you once they have their VAT number. But whilst waiting for their VAT number they can charge VAT but they cannot show it separate, for example, if the price was £100 + £20 VAT (total £120), they cannot show the £100 and the £20, they can only show on the invoice £120 (no breakdown) and then when they have their VAT number they should reissue that invoice to the customer but now showing the net + VAT (£100 + £20) and only with this reissued invoice can the customer reclaim the VAT because the customer does not hold a valid VAT invoice because there is no VAT number nor breakdown of the VAT on the invoice. If selling to a consumer it makes sense to charge the £120 in full because it will be difficult to go back to the customer after you've made the sale, whereas if selling to a business customer who has an account with you, the supplier could have just charged the £100 for now and then charged the £20 VAT once they got their VAT number, but again, more admin./time so easier to just charge everyone £120 and then issue VAT invoices later. Section 5.1 of this link Who should register for VAT (VAT Notice 700/1)/vat-notice-7001-should-i-be-registered-for-vat#accounting-for-vat

Why is the landlord paying 20% VAT on domestic electricity? Domestic electricity is 5% reduced rated. If each flat has an individual meter, then why are the utility companies charging 20% VAT on a supply that is clearly being made to a domestic property? I doubt HMRC advised the landlord on any of this. When a landlord charges his tenants specifically for the provision of utilities such as electricity/gas/water and charges for each tenant’s actual consumption, it is a separate transaction outside that of the rent (rent is always exempt). The tenant is seen as buying their utilities from the landlord separate to their rental agreement. A landlord is entitled to a deduction for input tax on the purchase of utilities to the extent that such a utility is resold as a separate taxable item. The supply of domestic electricity is 5%. Suspect landlord is just recharging to tenants what he himself has incurred, so if he is being charged £100 + 20% VAT by the utility provider then he will recharge £100 + 20% to the tenant and he is not out of pocket, so it might be the problem lays with the utility supplier who is charging wrong rate of VAT to the landlord. This is one for the tenants association/service charge company to deal.

If you paid an agent to deregister you, then you should go back to the agent and get them to fix this because it is a problem they created when they failed to deregister you correctly. Yes, you can write to HMRC and ask to be deregistered for VAT, they may allow you to deregister from an earlier date if you can supply evidence and proof that you had stopped trading last year (example, copy of your business bank account showing no more income, or if you had an eBay/Amazon account, proof that this account is now closed as at last year). Writing is a slow process and so you will have uncertainty until you get a response from HMRC, it could be 30-60 days before you get a reply. HMRC do not always accept a backdated deregistration when a current VAT return is outstanding, you may need to file a Nil VAT return. Or you may need to explain in your de-registration letter as to why you cannot file via MTD, HMRC may accept exceptional circumstances. Being a foreigner is not an excuse, you registered for VAT and have a legal obligation to comply with the UK VAT rules which includes filing VAT returns digitally,. If you do not have the knowledge then a reasonable business owner would seek paid for assistance using an agent or Accountant to ensure compliance. You cannot file a paper VAT return/cannot send return in the post. HMRC will not accept a paper VAT return received in the post.

It is always necessary to hold proof of any input tax claim and so yes, you must hold fuel receipts that confirm that you have purchased fuel, otherwise you could pretend to have made journeys in order to claim VAT you never incurred. Section 9.10 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-motoring-expenses-notice-70064#road-fuel-bought-for-business