How do i tag import VAT certificates?
Do I treat it like any normal receipt from any purchase that I have paid VAT on, which I will ultimately reclaim? Or is there a special section for this?
Can I just clarify what you’re referring to by “VAT certificate” please? Are you able to give an example of where you have obtained the document from?
Monthly HMRC certificate showing how much vat I have paid for imports each month
I presume you mean your C79s. These are just a document for HMRC for you to keep to show that you have paid the vat to them. A receipt from HMRC if you like. You will have recorded the actual payment of vat when you inputted the invoice from the carrier or freight forwarder who cleared the goods at the border. They will have sent you an invoice for duty, deferment, customs clearance and vat. Just file the C79s, they do not need to be entered into QuickFile.
Yes, but I still need to reclaim this and since I am doing all my vat returns via quick file, with the software linked to HMRC, payments of vat, whether taken from C79 or initial border receipts, need to be entered somewhere into the quick file system and tagged appropriately as a reclaimable vat payment.
Before using QuickFile i entered this manually on the HMRC website with “vat on purchases and other inputs” .
How do you actually pay the VAT? Do you pay it to your freight forwarder as part of their invoice to you or do you have your own deferment account?
Usually I pay the vat to the shipping company or directly to HMRC (for instances of MIB - Merchandise In Baggage) upon entry of the goods to the UK by debit card in order to release the goods from customs. Occasionally, for smaller imports , I’ll pay a week later when I get a bill from the shipping company eg: Fedex.
If you’re paying the VAT to the shipping company it is presumably part of the invoice from them that you are recording as a purchase in QuickFile, so you can enter it there - you’ll probably have to record the purchase as multiple lines since the VAT element is likely to be more than 20% of the net, so you’d have to do something like
- one line for the ex-VAT value of the goods you’re importing plus the import duty, on which you have to pay the import VAT, set at 20% VAT
- another line for minus the ex-VAT value, this time at “no VAT”. The combination of these two lines together will be to list the import duty as the net and the import VAT (including the VAT on top of duty) as the VAT element
- a third line for the shipper’s own charges, at the appropriate rate of VAT
You’ll probably have to do the same thing with the receipt you get for MIB imports - one line for the net-plus-duty at 20%, and another to cancel out the net at “no VAT”.
This way you shouldn’t need to enter anything in QuickFile for the C79 itself, but you still need to keep it as evidence that you’re allowed to reclaim the import VAT.
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