Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Small businesses that sell into Europe face £180m in extra red tap costs as they get swept up in new EU One-Stop-Shop VAT rules.
The new EU One-Stop-Shop rules, which will be introduced on July 1, are designed to stop an estimated designed to stop an estimated €7bn in annual VAT fraud by non-EU ecommerce sellers, mainly located in China, according to Alavera.
However, the EU One-Stop-Shop changes remove remove VAT exemptions for SMEs and shipments not exceeding €22 (£19), which means about 26,000 UK e-commerce sellers will have to register for VAT in an EU member state for the first time.
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This will cost a majority of these companies at least €8,000 (£6,900) a year each, or roughly €208m (£180m) annually.
“Now we’re outside of the EU, [the UK has] been lobbed in with VAT-avoiding Chinese traders, and ecommerce companies will pay the price,” Richard Asquith, vice-president global indirect tax at Avalera, told the Financial Times.
UK e-commerce sellers will now have three options when trading into the EU:
Register for VAT in the country where they sell most of their goods, which the European Commission estimates will