VAT flat rate, cash accounting, customers outside EU

Accounting
1

Fairly simple one but I’ve searched the archives and not yet seen an answer on this one.

Some of my customers are outside the EU. One of them has just paid my USD invoice via Paypal. (If that is relevant - it meant that I could not tag the uploaded bank statement entry against the invoice, but had to create a new one).

I’ve just had a look at the VAT calculations - the return is due at the end of the month. This payment is included in my “Flat rate turnover inc VAT” and therefore my VAT calculation is wrong. I see there are adjustments available but it looks like you have to adjust each figure and provide supporting documentation.

Any guidance available?

BTW:
“if your supplies are outside the scope of VAT, leave them out of your flat rate turnover.” according to:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-733-flat-rate-scheme-for-small-businesses/vat-notice-733-flat-rate-scheme-for-small-businesses

2

That is correct, you need to mark the invoice as Out of Scope and it will be removed from your flat rate turnover.

3

Thanks Glenn, should have found that myself really.

But after I modified this particular invoice to be out of scope, I then went to the client details and found that (unless my mind is playing tricks on me) the client was already marked as out of scope. Is that possible, that the client was already marked as out of scope when I created the invoice?

Here’s an idea - when you enter a new client’s address, it should be linked to the VAT settings, so that if you pick an outside-EU country, it would pop up a box to say “do you want this client to be marked out of scope”? And similar for EU member states - a prompt to enter their VAT number, OSLT.

4

If you mark a client as Out of Scope all this does is show the OOS checkbox on their invoices, you’d still need to check that box when saving the invoice.

Regarding defaulting the setting, this may work but VAT is very nuanced, there’s rarely a one size fits all approach. We can certainly consider this though as it’s really only going to determine if the OOS box appears or not and it would save time for newbie users.

5

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