Foreign registered sellers with payments suspended because of VAT registration
A number of have posted about having our payments suspended as our VAT registrations are non-uk. I opened a case to complain, mainly because all payments from our European stores are blocked too which have different VAT registrations. Support asked me to post a screenshot of the issue....................I mean seriously, this isn't funny.
Foreign registered sellers with payments suspended because of VAT registration
A number of have posted about having our payments suspended as our VAT registrations are non-uk. I opened a case to complain, mainly because all payments from our European stores are blocked too which have different VAT registrations. Support asked me to post a screenshot of the issue....................I mean seriously, this isn't funny.
86 replies
Seller_JwEDJKSAjvH5e
Has anyone heard further from Amazon about this issue at this stage?
Seller_RyBiR05Djvp7V
Hello @Seller_JwEDJKSAjvH5e,
Thank you for reaching out to the Seller Forums Community.
This is Amelia from Amazon to assist you.
A number of have posted about having our payments suspended as our VAT registrations are non-uk. I opened a case to complain, mainly because all payments from our European stores are blocked too which have different VAT registrations. Support asked me to post a screenshot of the issue....................I mean seriously, this isn't funny.
From the post above, we understand your concern related to the disbursements.
For a more detailed understanding of the issue, please confirm if you are still facing the issue regarding disbursement as this was posted 3 weeks ago.
If yes, we request you to kindly provide us the snapshot/screenshot of performance notification received in your Seller Central about the issue in hand, so that we can guide you better.
Kindly feel free to post on the same thread for any further assistance. The forums community and I are here to support you.
Regards,
Amelia
Seller_h4Q5gMZtEy3ym
We are going through the same problem. Our company is UK based but technically because the seat of executive management is in Belgium HMRC sees us as non-UK for VAT and UK for everything else.
When we started on Amazon in 2021 we asked them to collect VAT on our behalf as per the VAT legislation of 1/1/2021 and they actively refused to do so. We were in contact with HMRC at the time, and they were surprised but told us to then pay VAT directly as Amazon refused to collect VAT as they were expected to do so.
Amazon hit us with the VAT bill for "owed VAT" back in September and we have been running the gauntlet trying to resolve this issue while trying not to let it kill us through an unexpected cashflow shortage.
Regardless of multiple attempts to speak to a _human_ about the issue, we kept being knocked back, including after repeated contact with the Managing Director email address, who could only tell us what we already know.
Since the robots at Amazon weren't helping, we approached HMRC who also didn't help (because they couldn't understand the issue), so we just filed a tax return with a claim for a refund of all VAT on Amazon income since 2021. This got HMRC's attention, and we had a partial audit.
Our case worker at HMRC couldn't believe this process where HMRC would give back money to us, to give to Amazon, to give back to HMRC - we agree, it's insanity. Regardless, HMRC eventually agreed and issued a refund, after we agreed to sign an agreement that we would pay the amount being credited directly to Amazon and provide HMRC with proof of payment. The terms of this agreement were essentially via another procedure, outlined in HMRC notice 700/45, related to unjust enrichment and the reimbursement scheme.
We received our refund and have paid our "owed" VAT to back to Amazon, providing proof of payment to HMRC.
We are still waiting for Amazon to "review the payment" and unlock disbursements. No idea how long this will take.
We are also demanding Amazon provide us with a breakdown of how they came to the VAT total, and it doesn't match the invoices they generated during that period, nor their VAT transaction report, nor for payment statements, all three of which provide conflicting VAT total amounts!
We believe Amazon didn't follow the legislation and now HMRC has finally cracked the whip and Amazon is making it someone else's problem to fix their compliance issue.
Good luck to everyone else in the same boat - it's good to know we're not alone. It couldn't have come at a worse time, to have a cashflow issue just as we are preparing marketing spending for the end of year season.
We were always cautious about putting faith in Amazon, but now we will never trust Amazon after this.
Seller_BmvWY2s9RUQe0
Hi @Seller_JwEDJKSAjvH5e The same is happening to me, my business is incorporated in the UK but I live in Spain and have no offices or employees. How did you prove establishment in your country?
Seller_Mwk0KtLuKEYYP
Good afternoon,
it's so great that I found this thread since we are in the same exact situation.
On September 13, 2023, Amazon blocked our funds, 2 months later in November, he sent us the amount to be paid - this is a six-figure amount, of course, we do not have such an amount. And all this time we were trying to prove to Amazon that we had already paid VAT, except for the last payments, when we already had problems.
For the last month, Amazon has simply been ignoring messages. But last week he provided us with a payment plan, and he probably thinks we can pay that amount, considering that we have received 0 payments from Amazon for the last 5 months.
I have just one question for you: is it possible to submit a request for a refund from HMRC if Amazon has still not provided these mythical reports in the correct format?
Can we simply complete Form V625 to initiate the return?
