Living in Ireland Trading in the UK?

Blindside87

Hi All,

I am planning to setup a .co.uk website.

Presumably I need to register for VAT in the UK, is this possible for an Irish person to do?

Has anyone done anything like this.

Any advice appreciated.

Blindside

DubTony

You don't need to register unless you think you'll hit their vat threshold. You simply charge vat at our rate. And remember if your business is primarily b2b you won't be charging any vat to vat registered businesses in the UK when exporting from here

www.hmrc.gov.uk
If you want to register, you should get the info here. But don't be late in paying. Those boys don't f@ck around.

Fitz123

If you are selling B2C into the UK from Ireland, it may indeed by regarded as distance selling. Some details of this for the UK are;

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/international/distance-selling.htm

And the Irish Revenue equivalent;

http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vat/leaflets/distance-sales-eu.html.

So potentially you may have to register for Irish VAT and only UK VAT if you go above a £70,000 threshold.

Blindside87

Thanks guys.

I will be dropshipping from the UK so not sure if this matters (as in I won't be exporting a product from here to the UK).

I wouldn't expect to go over 70k sterling in my first year.

I already have an existing business here so am already registered for VAT etc. here.

So I would not need to pay VAT in the UK..would I be paying VAT here then?

Would I need to setup a UK bank account or can I use my existing Ulster bank account?

Sorry for all the questions, am researching this at the moment.

Thanks.

DubTony

Assuming you're purchasing from a UK company, as an Irish company, I assume that your supplier is "exporting" to you, and so you are effectively "exporting" to your customers.

Be careful here though. There was a case a few years ago where, if I remember correctly, a British company exported to an Irish company which in turn exported back to Britain, without the products ever leaving the UK. I think that the Irish company was a division of the British one and the whole thing was set up to avoid paying VAT to the British government. There were millions involved at the time, so it was quite high profile.

In theory, it should work with no vat being paid anywhere, but there may be a clause of some sort in British law. Best advice will come from the Inland Revenue over there.

Your Irish operations remain the same. Even if you drop ship from Britain to Ireland, the transaction between you and your customers is Irish to Irish and so vat must be applied.

dbran

What do you mean by "drop shipping"? Where do the goods go from/to?