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Yes, but the customer isn't always a consumer, so in that case you get a lot of extra burden: pull in the VAT number of the consumer, verify it and if it is cor

Yes, but the customer isn't always a consumer, so in that case you get a lot of extra burden: pull in the VAT number of the consumer, verify it and if it is correct make the sale without VAT, otherwise make the sale with VAT. Yes, but such sales are outside the scope of the VAT MOSS scheme. Note that under VATMOSS any of the tax adminstrators in the EU has the right to audit you so it really pays off to do this well. We're well aware of this. We spent a great deal of time trying to implement a fully compliant system when the new rules came into effect, and we were still among the first businesses to get one of the fake demands for money never owed because apparently with our vast resources as a little family business we were better at getting it right than several national tax authorities with the resources of an entire government behind them. If that isn't a perfect illustration of the impracticality and excessive burden of the current system, I don't know what is. And it's the 'place of consumption' rather than the 'place of supply'. No, for digital services and private consumers, it's the place of supply rules that changed: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers/vat-businesses-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-dig... Of course the practical effect of the changes is typically that the place of supply is now treated as the customer's location where previously it was probably the business's location, so perhaps that's what you meant and we're really talking about the same thing here.

jacquesm 10y ago
> Yes, but such sales are outside the scope of the VAT MOSS scheme. So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? > Of course the practical effect of the changes is typically that the place of supply is now treated as the customer's location where previously it was probably the business's location, so perhaps that's what you meant and we're really talking about the same thing here. Yes, that's what I meant. BTW that 'demand for money' also happened to me, it appears that in the first few months of VATMOSS there was a massive cock-up at the Irish department tasked with this leading to a whole pile of nastygrams sent to lots of EU businesses, they never even apologized for that (or sent any follow up saying that they were in error).
- Silhouette 10y ago
  So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? I wondered the same thing. I'm not aware of any circumstances under which it would make a difference that are still affected by MOSS. BTW that 'demand for money' also happened to me My sympathies. The Irish department reportedly wasn't the only one to mess up like this, either, though it's the only one I've encountered personally so far. In the UK, it was actually HMRC (our own national tax authority) that sent out messages to affected businesses confirming it was an error.
  - mherrmann 10y ago
    > So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? I must admit I'm not 100% sure either. I'm just exposing the API of the underlying open source project which says to supply the seller's country [1]. [1]: https://github.com/mpociot/vat-calculator https://github.com/mpociot/vat-calculator At the bottom, where it says "Important"
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      If you're 'not sure' you should take this offline until you are sure. Bookkeeping is an extremely bad area to go 'move fast and break stuff' because what you're breaking is other people's administrations and you won't have a way to fix it or even to reach them to inform them of an issue.
      - mherrmann 10y ago
        You're being extremely critical in this entire thread. Tell me: How is having this field, unnecessary or not, a risk? You want me to take the site offline. But it's providing value to my own business, and apparently other people find it interesting as well. It's merely a REST API for an existing open source project. And whether people use the library or the REST API is the same from a risk perspective from their point of view. I'm providing value here, and am happy to run the risk you're advising against. So I will not take it offline.

jacquesm 10y ago

> Yes, but such sales are outside the scope of the VAT MOSS scheme. So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? > Of course the practical effect of the changes is typically that the place of supply is now treated as the customer's location where previously it was probably the business's location, so perhaps that's what you meant and we're really talking about the same thing here. Yes, that's what I meant. BTW that 'demand for money' also happened to me, it appears that in the first few months of VATMOSS there was a massive cock-up at the Irish department tasked with this leading to a whole pile of nastygrams sent to lots of EU businesses, they never even apologized for that (or sent any follow up saying that they were in error).

Silhouette 10y ago
So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? I wondered the same thing. I'm not aware of any circumstances under which it would make a difference that are still affected by MOSS. BTW that 'demand for money' also happened to me My sympathies. The Irish department reportedly wasn't the only one to mess up like this, either, though it's the only one I've encountered personally so far. In the UK, it was actually HMRC (our own national tax authority) that sent out messages to affected businesses confirming it was an error.
- mherrmann 10y ago
  > So why ask for the country of the seller in the API? I must admit I'm not 100% sure either. I'm just exposing the API of the underlying open source project which says to supply the seller's country [1]. [1]: https://github.com/mpociot/vat-calculator https://github.com/mpociot/vat-calculator At the bottom, where it says "Important"
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    If you're 'not sure' you should take this offline until you are sure. Bookkeeping is an extremely bad area to go 'move fast and break stuff' because what you're breaking is other people's administrations and you won't have a way to fix it or even to reach them to inform them of an issue.
    - mherrmann 10y ago
      You're being extremely critical in this entire thread. Tell me: How is having this field, unnecessary or not, a risk? You want me to take the site offline. But it's providing value to my own business, and apparently other people find it interesting as well. It's merely a REST API for an existing open source project. And whether people use the library or the REST API is the same from a risk perspective from their point of view. I'm providing value here, and am happy to run the risk you're advising against. So I will not take it offline.