VAT Payable on 0% sales invoices raised

Support
1

Just put the first 2 invoices in of the year, and they are both for customers exempt from vat - based in Spain.
Went to do a dummy VAT return and it says I owe 10% of the value of the sales to the vatman (I’m on 10% flat rate)

I entered them both via the banking screen as an invoice via ‘Tag Me!’, to 2 different clients who are set as ‘exempt from VAT’ on their customers records. On entering the invoice info on the tagging screen I had to choose ‘No Vat’ which I did.

The only way to get rid of the vat owing is to go back into the individual invoice, click ‘Edit’ on Additional VAT Options, and then choose ‘Out of Scope for UK VAT’.

The vat amount then disappears for the vat return calculation for that client.

As virtually all my sales come from customers outside of the UK, this is a rather time consuming process.
Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

2

No vat actually means zero rated.

Someone else may comment but I’d imagine the issue is creating the invoice from the tag me screen. Rather than under sales first then tagging the payment to it.

3

Are these sales of goods or of services? Exports of goods are zero rated and do count towards your flat rate turnover but B2B sales of services to overseas customers are out of scope so don’t.

4

Hi

These are exports of removal services, so are out of scope of UK vat.