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1. Some sellers have temporarily suspended service to the UK until more is understood about the new Brexit legislation. Should I continue selling to the UK? Packages from outside the UK are still passing through UK customs, and we encourage sellers to ship to the UK as they did before Brexit. 2. When will BrickLink implement the Brexit tax solution mentioned in the recent email? We don’t have an exact date, but we are planning for sometime in Q2 (April-June). 3. When will you start collecting VAT on orders? As soon as the functionality is deployed on the BrickLink site, we will begin collecting VAT on all qualifying orders. 4. How does the seller have evidence that they have paid VAT over each sale? BrickLink is responsible for taxes being paid on qualifying orders. BrickLink will provide the seller with a copy of the invoice that it has issued to the buyer identifying the VAT charged. The seller can use this invoice to accompany the parcel and complete the customs declaration verifying that VAT has been sufficiently collected at the point of sale. 5. The solution for Northern Ireland seems a little confusing. Can you explain more about that? In most cases, Northern Ireland will follow the same rules as the rest of the UK. The major exception is that for transactions involving EU countries, Northern Ireland will still be inside the EU customs union. For example, if a buyer from Northern Ireland places an order in a VAT registered German store, the buyer would pay for VAT at the point of sale, but no VAT or other customs charges would be due when the package entered Northern Ireland. 6. Why is BrickLink subject to new marketplace rules if they are not a payment processor? There are a number of factors that help define a “marketplace”, and when considering the entire picture, we believe BrickLink to be a “marketplace” as defined in recent legislation. This includes Brexit legislation. 7. Do UK/Northern Ireland sellers need to invoice BrickLink as their client and count it as an export to the US? How will this situation be handled? Where the buyer is in the US and the goods are exported from the UK to the US, US sales tax would be collected, so no additional export information is needed. 8. On both the Members by Location and Items for Sale features, the UK is still part of the EU. When will this be changed? All site changes related to Brexit will be deployed together with the new Brexit tax feature sometime during Q2 (April-June). 9. How do these changes affect BrickLink transactions within the UK? Transactions within the UK will carry on as they did before Brexit. Sellers who are VAT registered will charge VAT and report it to the UK tax authorities, and transactions with non VAT registered UK sellers will not be affected by VAT. BrickLink will not collect VAT on transactions within the UK. 10. Will the Brexit tax solution require all stores to use onsite payment methods? No. Onsite payment will only be required for transactions where BrickLink must collect VAT, i.e. all sales from outside the UK equal to or less than £135. However, the EU tax solution coming later this year (which includes Norway, Australia, and New Zealand) will also require an onsite payment method for any transaction where BrickLink collects tax. 11. Can you clarify the non import/export transactions especially from the UK side for a UK seller and UK buyer? The VAT obligation is on the UK seller to identify if and when they have to charge VAT. BrickLink has no part to play in the VAT treatment of UK domestic transactions. 12. As a seller, I do not use PayPal, and many of my customers do not use credit cards and are therefore unable to use Stripe. Do I have any other options when it comes to onsite payment methods? We hope to add more payment methods after the initial tax solution is deployed. We will focus payment methods that would be most useful to our European members. 13. For the last several months, VAT charges have been added to my BrickLink fees. Does the Brexit tax solution affect this in any way? BrickLink is now registered with the UK government, so for VAT collected from UK sellers, we simply have changed the entity we report these taxes to. VAT on seller fees is sometimes confused with tax or VAT that is charged on actual transactions, but it’s really a completely separate process. 14. Some items sold on BrickLink are zero-rated for VAT in the UK — books, magazines, leaflets (instructions), brochures (catalogs). Is this being taken into account? BrickLink has realigned its catalog category system to address this issue. We will charge the appropriate VAT tax based on the tax rating of each category. 15. Where can I find the very latest information on BrickLink’s Brexit tax solution? We will continue to add to these FAQs and will post in the BrickLink Forum whenever there is an update. |