eBay charging VAT on cross border transactions within the island of Ireland

[jhb171achill]

On 16/6/2021 at 8:03 AM, murphaph said:

I'm not seeing where eBay should be adding VAT on for a sale between two private parties across the Irish border. In the table they provide the last row states that they will not be collecting VAT for sales inside the EU and this is the crux of the matter: NI is not in the EU but it is in the EU's VAT area so the intra-EU rules should apply:

Inside EU*, Any value, Inside EU*, No

Also note these changes only take effect from the 1st of July according to that page. I suspect eBay are actually (incorrectly) applying UK law in this case as the UK went ahead with all these online VAT changes in January already (the changes were agreed at EU level while the UK was still a member state and the UK went ahead and implemented them as originally planned whereas the EU decided to delay their implementation due to the Covid and Brexit problems for 6 months).

I still think eBay is wrong here because NI is in the EU's VAT area and should be treated as such by both the EU and UK. That's the whole point of the protocol, to maintain the all island economy as laid out in the Good Friday Agreement. As we all know with places like the Canaries, being inside the EU itself doesn't mean being inside the EU's VAT area and vice versa. The eBay page is a bit wishy washy there. They should be using the term "EU VAT area", rather than "EU" I think. The Canaries are in the EU but outside the EU VAT area. NI is outside the EU but inside the EU VAT area. There are a handful of other examples of being inside the EU but outside its VAT and customs area, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Büsingen_am_Hochrhein 

Excellent info.

On 18/11/2021 at 10:27 AM, StevieB said:

The trouble these days is that it is much easier for the Revenue to catch the little men rather than the big ones. One has only to look at the mega corporations, which shift money about legally, but unethically, to reduce their tax burden.

Stephen

Very true indeed.