Jay Cooke

The UK is no longer in the EU for over 4 years now. Unless you are based in Northern Ireland, the place of supply of goods is where the goods are at the time of sale. According to your description, you (UK entity) buys goods from a German supplier, that would suggest you take ownership of the coffee in Germany. Even if the goods remain at the suppliers German warehouse before being shipped, the ownership/title to the goods changes from German supplier to you (UK owner of the goods in Germany). You don't have to physically hold goods in your hand or your own warehouse to be the owner of them. The German supplier/warehouse may ship the goods to your EU customers but at the time these goods are shipped to EU customers, you (UK) own the goods and the German supplier is shipping your goods for you. As you are not a company in Germany, then there is a Nil VAT registration threshold meaning the UK entity had a requirement to register for German VAT from the very first sale made from Germany. Zero rate is still a rate of VAT even though the end effect is that no VAT is due or payable, zero rate is not "no VAT", VAT is being charged, just at 0%. When you sell from Germany to EU businesses, you are right that the EU customers then account for VAT under reverse charge, but that can only happen between two EU VAT registered entities, UK is not in the EU. If you only have a UK VAT number then your customers can still probably reverse charge - albeit wrongly - as the checks and triggers for errors will be on the senders side (your side), as you are not completing an EC Sales List in Germany (which is a requirement when making an inter-EU movement of goods and the UK don't have EC Sales List anymore since Brexit), eventually one of the EU tax offices will wonder why these EU businesses are reverse charging purchases of coffee but there being no corresponding EC Sales List to report the sellers/sales side. Technically, all these EU sales take place in Germany and are recorded on a German VAT return and not recorded on the UK VAT return.

Who is responsible (importer of record) for paying the import duty and import VAT when the goods arrive in Italy? It will either by you or the Italian customer. The Incoterms will likely determine who is on the hook for the import duty/VAT. As the goods are not in the UK at time of sale then the sale is not subject to UK VAT, but if you are the importer of record of the goods into Italy, then you may have a requirement to register for VAT in Italy.

You have posted on another thread here where you state you are not VAT registered. https://community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/vat/d427edc2-a9e1-ee11-a81c-6045bd0cee3e I am a Amazon seller from China. I has been applying for VAT registration, but I do not make it succesfully yet. But now I need to ship products to UK......" Why do you have a C79 from 2022? That suggests you were VAT registered in 2022 and you then ask if you can reclaim this on your next VAT return, but you are not VAT registered? Were you registered for VAT in 2022 and then later on you de-registered for VAT? Why was the C79 from 2022 not reclaimed before you deregistered for VAT? The C79 is linked to your VAT number, so even if you re-register for VAT you cannot reclaim VAT from 2022 as that C79 belongs to a different VAT number.

Thanks for clarification as to you being a publisher. You can't reclaim VAT on zero rated purchases. If your writers are not VAT registered or your suppliers are zero rating supplies to you, then what VAT are you expecting to reclaim from them? They haven't charged you any VAT. Put another way, you seem to be asking how you can reclaim VAT on purchases where none of your purchases have VAT on them.. You could consider the flat rate scheme if your turnover is under £150k, else it does not seem that VAT is the problem here and instead it is one of income vs expenditure. If you are not making a profit, it will rarely be to do with VAT. If you bought something for £10 no VAT, the cost to you is £10. If you bought something for £10 + £2 VAT and you reclaim the £2 VAT, the cost to you is still £10. VAT has made no impact whatsoever on your costs. If you then sell the thing for £20, your cost is £10 and your sale price is £20 and your profit margin is £10. So if you are struggling to make money, the issue is more likely either the cost of goods is too high or your prices are too low or some other business related matter, the VAT is unlikely the issue here.

Zero rate is a rate of VAT, a seller who zero rates their sale (such as printed matter) is making a taxable (VATable) sale, that sale is subject to VAT, it just so happens to be the rate of VAT is zero percent. Zero rate is entirely different and not the same as "not charging VAT". Partial exemption relates to a business which makes both taxable supplies (zero, reduced, standard) and also exempt supplies (welfare, insurance, finance, etc). With zero rate, you are charging VAT, albeit at 0% and you are entitled to reclaim your input tax on costs...because you are charging VAT, you are making a taxable (VATable) supply. With exempt sales, you are not charging any VAT at all, and because no VAT is being charged then you are not entitled to reclaim any input tax on your costs. A partially exempt business, which makes both VATable/taxable sales and exempt sales has to perform a partial exemption calculation to adjust what amount of input tax they can reclaim. In terms of expenditure then, if you buy in goods which are zero rated or exempt then there is no VAT for you to reclaim. For example, you buy a pack of stamps for £5 from the Post Office, this purchase is exempt because postage stamps are exempt, Post Office is not charging any VAT on these stamps and so there is nothing for you to reclaim either. You cannot reclaim VAT on purchases where VAT was not actually charged by the supplier/seller. But are you sure "hardly anything we buy is standard rated?"....Do you not buy in plain paper, card, inks and dyes? These would usually be standard rated purchases. Do you have a printer in the office? Do you have a cutting machine that trims paper? These machines will be standard rated when you buy or lease them. You should be able to reclaim the VAT on these purchases as long as you have a VAT invoice from the supplier and the invoice clearly shows net, VAT, gross on the invoice. In your quote "A zero-rated VAT item is an item that falls within the VAT scheme but the VAT charge is 0%. So reclaiming VAT on zero-rated supplies is still an option if you’ve bought things necessary for your business that year." what that is saying is what I've stated earlier, zero rated sales allows you to reclaim input tax on purchases related to the zero rated supplies (sales) you have made, but of course you have to actually incur input tax/be charged VAT by your suppliers in order to reclaim VAT. I'd have thought a typical printer business would be in a refund position most quarters as there is no output tax due to HMRC (all sales zero rated) and any input tax on purchases is recoverable. Your Accountant appears to be correct in saying that you cannot reclaim VAT on purchases which are zero rated. How can you reclaim VAT when there is no VAT showing on the purchase invoice? I suggest you go back to your Accountant and ask them to explain in more detail as to what VAT your business can reclaim. To reiterate, you can only reclaim VAT where it has been incurred/charged by a supplier and shown on the suppliers invoice. the partial exemption £7,500 you refer to is saying a partially exempt business can reclaim input tax in full if it is under the £7,500 threshold but that business still has t incur VAT being charged to it by suppliers. if the business buys all of its goods and services from non VAT registered traders, then a partially exempt business as no input tax to reclaim at all, the £7,500 is irrelevant as there is no VAT being incurred by the business. saying you can reclaim VAt if it is under £7,500

Might be easier to contact the VAT group team directly at grimsby.groupreplies@hmrc.gov.uk or try 0300 322 7878 as calling the general helpline will takes at least 45 minutes waiting and with no guarantee that the call handler can resolve your query.

You are in the right area/section of your government gateway/business account homepage. Is there not an option for "VAT" when you are going through the options? Manage account> Add tax, duty or scheme to your account> Get online access to a tax, duty or scheme?> VAT VAT has nothing to do with self assessment for MTD for income tax. So you need to explore around this "manage account" but avoid any options that relate to self assessment or personal taxes.

Good question Tania In the old days of paper VAT certificate, the information would be printed on the reverse of the paper certificate, with the modern downloaded .pdf VAT certificate from the government gateway, it does not mention who the members of the VAT group are, a really silly omission.

timh8 You cannot reclaim Portugal VAT on the UK VAT return, you would need a VAT registration in Portugal for that. Discuss "Incoterms" with your customer and freight agent. If you are shipping DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) then you will pay the import duty/import VAT when goods enter Portugal, so this will eat into your margin/may need to adjust your price to customer. If you ship DAP (Delivered At Place) then your customer is the one who pays the import duty/VAT and assuming your customer is VAT registered in Portugal, the customer may be able to reclaim the Portugal Import VAT on their Portugal VAT return (you don't state if your customer is a consumer or another business).

You cannot reclaim foreign VAT that has been charged on an invoice from an overseas supplier. You can only ever reclaim UK VAT that has been charged by a supplier who has a UK VAT number, on your UK VAT return. You should therefore record the invoice as a gross amount, no VAT, seeing as the VAT can't be reclaimed on the UK VAT return. The 10% IVA could be reclaimed by making a VAT refund claim directly to the Italian tax office.https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/accounting-for-vat-on-goods-moving-between-great-britain-and-northern-ireland-from-1-january-2021/check-how-to-claim-a-refund-of-vat-paid-in-an-eu-member-state If you think how VAT works, UK supplier raises invoice to UK customer, say £100 + £20 VAT. The customer pays £120 to supplier and supplier pays £20 VAT to HMRC and keeps £100...customer is out of pocket by £20 and HMRC are up by £20, the supplier is neutral as they just charged it and collected it. If the customer can reclaim the VAT back from HMRC, then the supplier, HMRC and customer are all neutral, there is no VAT loss anywhere and this is how VAT generally works. If the supplier is in Italy and charges Italian VAT to the UK customer, the Italian supplier doesn't pay this VAT over to HMRC, the supplier pays it over to the Italian taxman. If then a UK customer reclaims this Italian VAT from HMRC, HMRC are now out of pocket by £10, the Italian government are up £10 and there is no mechanism for the Italians to pass that £10 over to HMRC, this then creates a VAT loss for HMRC and if HMRC were to discover this during a VAT inspection, HMRC would assess the UK business for reclaiming VAT they are not entitled to reclaim (foreign VAT).