Hi,
I just started selling on Amazon UK. My sales revenue is below £85k for now but Amazon is asking me to submit my VAT registration number.
The HMRC doesn’t require a VAT registration unless sales exceeds £85k.
What should I do? Thank you.
Do you live in the UK? If not, you must register for VAT, no threshold.
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Are you a uk based seller. If you are then tell them you are uk based and under the vat threshold
If you are not uk based then yes you will need to register for uk vat.
Send them your UTR number
Yes, I live in the UK.
How is it different from a VAT number? And shall I cancel my VAT registration? Thanks for your reply.
What legal entity did you use when you registered? Sole proprietor or limited company?
The information that is required depends on the legal entity.
UTR = Unique Tax Reference. This has absolutely nothing to do with VAT which is a sales tax and as you live in the UK, you only MUST register for VAT if the sales in the previous 12 months have reached £85000.
You MUST have a UTR. This could be a personal one or it could be for your limited company, whichever one applies to you.
Amazon will require the UTR either way.
May I stress that you get advice from an accountant or do some really good online research. The advice you get from forums etc (including mine) is often wrong, incomplete or misleading. There’s just 2 things that are certain in life, as you know. Death and taxes. Getting your tax status wrong is bad. Really bad.
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UTR number is for sole traders or self employed people and you don’t need to have VAT if your turnover is not 85000£
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Thanks, in my case I have a limited company, not sure if this still applies?
Everything I said before applies.
Assuming that your company is properly registered with companies house, there will be a company UTR that you need to tell Amazon.
You don’t need to register for VAT if your turnover in the last 12 months is less that £85K. Just tell Amazon. I say “just tell” but I appreciate that you may have to jump over many hoops before seller support understand.
Amazon Seller Support is your biggest hurdle for progression on Amazon.
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Thanks. If I imported goods from outside of the UK, can I reclaim back the input VAT to offset my output? How does it work?
Only if you are VAT registered. In fact, once you are VAT registered, you can register to “skip” payment of the import VAT as what is the point of paying it if you are going to claim it back anyway.
But once you are VAT registered, you need to charge VAT on your sales. Then, every quarter, you need to pay HMRC the difference what you have charged customers to what you have paid on purchases. So unless what you are selling is 0% registered, eg food or books etc, you will usually need to pay HMRC something.
I recommend you do some basic research on VAT rather than asking questions here. It is quite simple once you get the hang of it.
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You can be ltd and not vat registered. It depends if you are UK based or not.
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I am UK based, yes
Very good to know, thank you. I am not VAT registered yet but will do my research 