The platform officially responded
In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has been mixed, and countries have tightened policy regulations on the industry, and the ensuing compliance issues have also become an inevitable obstacle for sellers to avoid going overseas.
Recently, due to the rising dissatisfaction of sellers, Amazon UK officially responded to the recent tax review issues. The response statedThis tax review is a implementation of the new UK Value Added Tax (VAT) policy, which is necessary to promote the compliance of sellers' businesses. At the same time, Amazon will strive to reduce the inconvenience caused by the tax audit process to sellers and provide corresponding consulting services for sellers.
Amazon responds to tax audit emails Source: Amazon.
However, promoting cross-border e-commerce compliance should be what sellers are happy to do, so why are sellers on Amazon UK dissatisfied?
In fact, the cause of the incident is that Amazon UK station sent tax audit emails to sellers who did not meet the requirements of UK VAT paymentFreeze the funds in the corresponding seller's account, which seriously affects the seller's business development.
Even more excessively,Not only does Amazon require sellers to submit complicated supporting documents including passports, copies of UK VAT registration certificates, and bank statements, but the review process is also very slowMany sellers don't know when the account funds will be restored, so they "can't sleep well".
Amazon's ten-year-old seller complains about the cumbersome tax inspection process Source: Amazon.
After Amazon responded, many sellers replied below the announcement that they hoped to simplify the tax audit process and promote the normal recovery of the seller's account as soon as possible.
Be wary of tax-related risks
Although the sellers were caught off guard by this wave of tax checks on Amazon's UK station, it is not surprising, and it is no secret that the industry format of cross-border e-commerce is no longer a secretThe strengthening of the tax collection and traceability mechanism of e-commerce by market regulators in various countries has become a foregone conclusion.
Not to mention the European market, which has always been strict in tax compliance, in recent years, even the Southeast Asian market has opened the curtain of comprehensive tax supervision of cross-border e-commerce. At the end of 2023, the Inland Revenue Department of Thailand issued an announcement requiring e-commerce platforms with revenue of more than 1 billion baht in an account cycle to set up "electronic special accounts" to collect relevant information about cross-border sellers and report the real income obtained by sellers, which aims to promote cross-border sellers to pay taxes legally and compliantly.
Thailand Introduces New Regulations to Strengthen Tax Supervision of Cross-border Sellers Source: HKTDC Research
Of course, despite the cumbersome tax audit process, sellers must not treat e-commerce tax compliance as child's playAfter all, once you accidentally touch the red line of the tax system, various risks such as capital freezing, account blocking, and tax interest recovery will come to your door.
Previously, Amazon's "electric scooter" head sold No. 9 company because the localization ratio of third-party cooperative companies did not meet the EU duty-free standards, so a large number of export goods were required by the Dutch customs to correct the tax rate, and a total of 8258583 was recovered85 euros (6442.)80,000 RMB).
No. 9 Company was charged 64 million taxes Source: No. 9 Company announcement.
In this Amazon tax audit event, all VAT registered in the UK and the annual turnover is less than 8Sellers of £50,000 were also told by Amazon that they "need to pay all taxes since 2021", and some of them even need to pay more than £100,000.
It can be seen that under the premise that the control of cross-border taxation in the markets of various countries continues to increase, sellers should always pay attention to the relevant policy changes of overseas taxation and establish a complete tax compliance system to prevent problems before they occur.
Author |Cross-border Jun.