Reverse charging VAT on non EU services

I would appreciate thoughts/opinions on this please.

Our company uses a US based selling platform for which we get charged commission for each sale. Same idea as Ebay. Reading HMRC guidelines I believe that I will need to reverse charge the VAT on the commission charged. I understand that Quickfile doesn’t deal with reverse charging on services without some manual adjustments (which I’m ok with).

Do I need to reverse charge the VAT for these commission charges?

I’m not an accountant but my understanding is that if the service is one on which you would have been charged VAT had it been a UK-based supplier (it’s not something that is exempt from VAT in the UK) then yes, you should reverse charge the VAT.

In practice, assuming your business is not partially exempt, then you might as well do the RC anyway as it’s only a book exercise and doesn’t actually affect the amount of VAT you owe to the taxman. I’d rather do it and then be later told I didn’t really need to, than not do it and then be later told I should have.

I agree with @ian_roberts, the service would be subject to reverse charge

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Nice to have it confirmed by an actual accountant :slight_smile:

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Thank you everyone for your replies. Very helpful to have my own understanding confirmed as correct :smile: