After paying a £1 customs duty, the seller received a fine of 26,900 yuan

It is reported that the seller initially commissioned a tax agency in Shenzhen to handle European tax-related matters for him. The seller's business focus has not been on the UK site, and he usually makes zero declarations.

Throughout 2020, the seller sold only 1 self-delivered product on the UK site, with an order value of 6.99 pounds. According to the calculation of the tax agency, the seller needs to pay a customs duty of 1 pound for it. At the end of March this year, the seller also made the payment through a cooperative payment system.

Unexpectedly, not long after that, the seller received a ticket from the UK tax authorities, requiring him to pay a fine of 2,991.78 pounds, equivalent to RMB 26,900.

In theory, this fine came for no reason, after all, the seller had already paid the tax. However, after the seller patiently checked himself, he found that the reason for the fine was that the seller did not declare it in time, resulting in overdue declaration .

"From the time I paid the tariff to the time I received the fine notice, I never received even one notification from the tax agency I cooperated with." The seller still feels very aggrieved when he mentions it: "I am usually busy with operations and usually don't check the tax agency backend. It was not until April 14, when I had already received the fine notice, that the tax agency sent me two text messages in a row, notifying me to make a zero declaration."

In desperation, the seller decided to simply abandon the entire UK store - after all, there has only been one order so far. Coincidentally, there have been sellers who have previously stated that they received a fine notice after declaring through a tax agency, and the amount of the fine was far higher than the value of the product.

Some industry insiders suggest that sellers should personally check the official website of the VAT tax number government to see if they really need to pay such a large fine : "According to the instructions on the official website of the British government, even if it is a fine, it is impossible to pay such a large amount."

Some sellers are worried that similar situations are not just a result of a single overdue declaration, but the result of previous sellers making "underdeclarations". If this triggers the British government to conduct strict inspections on the VAT tax numbers of more Chinese sellers, it will be bad. However, some sellers believe that after the EU unified tax reform, VAT will be collected and paid by the platform, and it is basically impossible for sellers to make underdeclarations.

It is reported that before July 1, although the EU will not conduct a comprehensive review of sellers' previous tax situation, it will conduct random checks.

Not only in the UK, eBay has previously reminded sellers that it will take restrictive measures against accounts and their associated accounts that use false information to register for German VAT, including but not limited to account freezing. If the seller declares 0 in 2020 and has no sales, the German tax authorities will assume that the seller does not need to use a German tax number and will forcibly cancel it.

E-commerce platform

VAT

Amazon Platform