Ebay and HMRC

forgotmyname

What about those sellers that have multiple accounts? A limit wont work with that and sellers that have account on Ebay and Amazon and possibly their own website.

asajj

forgotmyname wrote: »

What about those sellers that have multiple accounts? A limit wont work with that and sellers that have account on Ebay and Amazon and possibly their own website.

Well it is nearly impossible to eradicate such crimes. There is always a way around them.There is simply not enough resources both in HMRC or the police. The thing is as long as people do what they are supposed to do, for the rest, you can only raise your concern and demand action.
Not to suggest you do but simply we can't say "but they all do this or that".

mrcol1000

asajj wrote: »

Well it is nearly impossible to eradicate such crimes. There is always a way around them.There is simply not enough resources both in HMRC or the police. The thing is as long as people do what they are supposed to do, for the rest, you can only raise your concern and demand action.
Not to suggest you do but simply we can't say "but they all do this or that".

The above is exactly the point. It really does not matter how many laws you pass and how many resources you throw at a crime, people will always find a way round it. What should be done is more to encourage people to inform HMRC on people who are flouting rules and ensure you actually follow up leads. However people would rather make vague accusations against people to defend their actions without actually giving anyone in authority any information to follow it up.

RFW

mrcol1000 wrote: »

The above is exactly the point. It really does not matter how many laws you pass and how many resources you throw at a crime, people will always find a way round it. What should be done is more to encourage people to inform HMRC on people who are flouting rules and ensure you actually follow up leads. However people would rather make vague accusations against people to defend their actions without actually giving anyone in authority any information to follow it up.

People reporting others really doesn't work at all. I can guess if some sellers aren't paying tax, and I may be right but there's no real way of knowing as an outsider. What would happen is people in a competitive business would just keep reporting competitors whether they paid tax or not.

As long as there have been taxes there's been a black market economy, there always will be. The under/no declaring online sellers are no different to the fly pitchers and countless other variations there are.

The sad fact is that it probably isn't worth putting money into governments collecting taxes properly, that's why our government has got rid of most of the tax inspectors. As long as there are daft herberts like me willing to pay the right amount then they can just squeeze a bit more out of me if they need to.

bxboards

bxboards wrote: »

I think HMRC is looking in the wrong places.

They seem oblivious to the 1000s of Chinese sellers essentially smuggling goods into the UK, or under-declaring them as 'toys' then warehousing them in the UK. None of these seem to be VAT registerd, and while the item location is in the UK, the sellers are based in China or Hong Kong.

This is a double edged sword, as these people are directly compete and can with genuine HMRC / VAT registered sellers, and can undercut them by at least 20% purely as the smuggling or under-declaration aspect allows them to undercut genuine businesses by 20%. I think until the UK does something about that, we are sleep walking into many many businesses closing. Due to the close relationship the UK is trying to forge with China, I doubt HRMC will be too keen to crack down on the obvious abuse.

Sorry to quote myself, but it looks like HRMC may finally be getting to grips with this:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/22/tax-officials-investigate-amazon-ebay-vat-fraud-overseas-sellers

Pierre_De_Grenoble

This is the 2nd time this has been reported on tamebay:-


http://tamebay.com/2015/12/lord-lucas-asks-more-questions-in-parliament-re-ebay-and-amazon-overseas-sellers-and-vat.html


ebay/amazon could be forced to sort this very easily ie VAT number required on a certain turnover and verification checks on any Vat number supplied.


if ebay can run a dodgy Vero program.. the effort to do the above is negligible.


Of course they & amazon choose to do nothing for the obvious reasons. (their bottom line etc)


I've never understood why the HMRC haven't sorted this out.. if the UK was a 3rd world country you'd be thinking of backhanders/influence in high places.


Thankfully we are not, so you have to accept that it's just plain old fashioned incompetence. and/or the lack of political will to force them into getting their hands dirty.