VAT on EU purchase with VAT paid to courier

[Magicbean]

I purchased something from Italy - they didn’t charge me the ~£138 import VAT. I tagged the purchase as Reverse Charge expecting to pay the VAT through my VAT return. This VAT quarter is about to close (but I still have time to edit).

Subsequently, I had a request from Fedex to pay the VAT direct to them, which I did.

When I look in return for the soon-to-be-closed VAT (box 1), it shows the VAT due from the Italian supplier as expected. But now that I have paid the VAT to Fedex I am trying to work out what to do.

My instinct is that I should now edit the Italian purchase to show 0% VAT rather than reverse charge. The purchase to Fedex in the next VAT quarter is just the import VAT.

That way it shows that no import VAT was paid on the original purchase but that it was paid to Fedex and will be subsequently reclaimed in the following return.

Is this correct?

Thank you.

[ian_roberts]

@Magicbean

I tagged the purchase as Reverse Charge

This is wrong, reverse charge only applies to services, not goods. For goods you either use “postponed accounting” (which you would have had to have told FedEx about in advance of the shipment) or you pay the VAT at import time.

Since you’ve paid the VAT up front to FedEx you can just mark the original purchase as 0% VAT.

[Magicbean]

@ian_roberts Ok, that makes sense. I realised that having paid VAT to Fedex, reverse charge was, in any case, wrong. It sounds like what I intend to do has the right outcome, though.
Thank you.