KVR Audio

liquidsonics · Post by **liquidsonics** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 2:17 pm

For once Apple makes it easier here. They pay the VAT because they're the developer's agent and the business to business transaction of Apple paying the developer is zero rated (or so I am told). So the Apple 30% cut probably mainly goes paying VAT.

swatwork · Post by **swatwork** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 9:54 pm

It looks like Google will be handling the VAT for Android developers selling through Play:
https://support.google.com/googleplay/a ... 0?hl=en-GB

Cyforce · Post by **Cyforce** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 4:11 pm

The new VAT rules will be very difficult for all smaller companies i guess. Maybe these, who uses external services to sell their digital goods (for example via ShareIt or Cleverbrigde) it won`t be a big change in their work process. But with a own shop including direct digital delivery it will be way more difficult

discoDSP · Post by **discoDSP** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 4:43 pm

Using reseller services like Share-it or Cleverbridge will make small developers earn less when using gross pricing, thats is, including VAT into final price. From a standard german 19%, VAT can go up to 25% in some countries.

And it's ridiculous getting full VAT for digital goods. Governments should apply reduced one.

audiothing · Post by **audiothing** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 11:45 am

It's pretty clear that they are forcing almost everyone to use resellers or increase the amount of bureaucracy to deal with.
And yes, another problem is the price shown on websites and press releases. Showing a gross price means earning less from countries where VAT is higher, while showing net + VAT price will probably be a bad marketing idea.

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 11:57 am

George wrote:And it's ridiculous getting full VAT for digital goods. Governments should apply reduced one.

why do you say that should that be, out of interest?

discoDSP · Post by **discoDSP** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:03 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:why do you say that should that be, out of interest?

I can understand a 20% UK VAT for normal goods, since they are generating waste, using roads, etc. to deliver to a customer. But that's not the case for a digital good, where expenses and resources used to deliver are much, much less. Charging a 5% reduced VAT would make a lot of sense to me.

Aloysius · Post by **Aloysius** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:08 pm

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:19 pm

George wrote:
whyterabbyt wrote:why do you say that should that be, out of interest?
I can understand a 20% UK VAT for normal goods, since they are generating waste, using roads, etc. to deliver to a customer. But that's not the case for a digital good, where expenses and resources used to deliver are much, much less. Charging a 5% reduced VAT would make a lot of sense to me.

But we already have specific taxes for those things, eg road and vehicle tax, and things like business rates etc which cover municipal services like waste collection. You dont pay all of them, one would presume.

liquidsonics · Post by **liquidsonics** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 1:08 pm

I would expect it's motivated by the fact that more and more regular goods are being bought online. This will continue to increase. So to have the VAT routed through whatever EU country has the lowest rate of VAT (as people like Amazon do already) isn't a tenable future proposition so they need to bring the tax collection to the state where the consumer is resident.

That there is now no grace threshold I gather is because some counties don't have one, some do, so they went with the minimum of zero. That's pretty inconvenient. I'm sure EU consumers are going to be cheesed off when the prices of their plugins from smaller EU vendors go up by their local VAT rate (most are around 20%) as I doubt many vendors will swallow that themselves. It sucks but the EU is going to get the blame, and things will only change after enough people get angry enough to change the way they vote.

kp · Post by kp » Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:00 am

Having been going round and round with this for my real job, it's a complete f*ing nightmare - we're looking at these guys as an option to integrate ecommerce with - http://www.taxamo.com/ - to provide the tax reporting and requisite data storage.

Richard_Synapse · Post by **Richard_Synapse** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 2:29 pm

whyterabbyt wrote:[But we already have specific taxes for those things, eg road and vehicle tax, and things like business rates etc which cover municipal services like waste collection.

I think what George means is if you have the option between a DVD and a Download at the same price, it would be nice to have a small extra incentive to choose the download. Ihmo makes sense, it'll never happen though, since taxes only ever go up.

Richard

CableChannel · Post by **CableChannel** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:27 am

Didn't read the whole thread, tried to google this topic to get concise information. Just wondering why are 90% of the information I find from the UK? Is this a rule that especially affects shops in UK?

Katzenjammer · Post by **Katzenjammer** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 11:50 am

CableChannel wrote:Didn't read the whole thread, tried to google this topic to get concise information. Just wondering why are 90% of the information I find from the UK? Is this a rule that especially affects shops in UK?

It affects just about every company in the whole world who sells to consumers within EU.

You can read more about it here http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/ta ... dex_en.htm

liquidsonics · Post by **liquidsonics** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 12:00 pm

CableChannel wrote:Just wondering why are 90% of the information I find from the UK? Is this a rule that especially affects shops in UK?

It looks like the UK's HMRC are going to be well prepared to take the extra money and have helped out by actually providing some good articles, although doing it a little more quickly would have been helpful. This applies to any seller anywhere to any customer in the EU (although those registered for VAT can claim it back, from the seller or their government I am not sure yet, but I plan to just offer rebates to those able to prove their VAT status).

For those of us using PayPal it's not too bad, I don't know much about the other payment gateways though. PayPal offers a means of setting up variable sales tax per country, so that's fairly simple for those who use it. Assuming you have a means of collecting an IP and a postal address, and can store those securely for the retention period (regularly storing encrypted files in some reliable cloud backup perhaps is wise), this should be only a little more of a hassle than being regular VAT registered would be. Getting the IP address of the customer will need some minor server side work for some of us as PayPal don't provide it in their reports or payment notifications (I've been in discussions with them and they claim data protection rules prevent them doing so).

I've just posted some advance notice on LiquidSonics news page to warn people of the changes coming up. Looking forward to the backlash! I decided it's most fair to only apply the VAT to the customer involved rather than hike prices for all by some average based on my sales into the various regions.

KVR Audio

2015 EU VAT rules ("MOSS")

Do you know about the new VAT rules for 2015?