I have always applied 20% vat to a customer in the UK. They now want me to ship their orders to Germany and have told me to apply a 19% vat rate.
I have a sales inventory of their items set at 20% but cant seem to change that to 19%.
Help please.
Many thanks
JH
If only it were that simple…
Welcome to the wonderful world of exports, imports, customs declarations, EORI numbers, one-stop shops, the list goes on. Nowadays you can’t simply “ship their order to Germany” - if you’re shipping out of the UK then it is an export, so typically you’d zero-rate the sale and then the customer would be responsible for paying the German import VAT (and possibly customs duty) when the goods arrive in the EU. You need to get an EORI number and declare the shipment to customs.
But there are all sorts of complications and exceptions and variations depending on things like whether you’re shipping from Great Britain or from Northern Ireland, whether the customer is a business or a consumer, whether the consignment value is less than or more than €150, whether you’re dealing with the customer directly or working through an online platform like Amazon, etc. If you’ve never been involved with exporting and importing before then you’ll probably need to take professional advice to get it right.
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