• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

scaramanga said:
That problem no longer exists as the Polish seller would not be charging VAT.
Click to expand...

Meanwhile in the real world...

Clearly, in this instance the Polish seller did charge tax. So the problem does exist. Companies may or may not adopt new systems to allow for them not to charge tax when exporting. Some UK shops like Harrods offer this, and you have to claim it back at the airport or such like. It is not simple, it is not clean, it is not easy. Many sellers are simply not bothering selling to the UK. Hopefully all of this irons out. But the truth of the matter is, we got a hard Brexit which impairs trade. The option that no one initially thought was a viable route - a hard brexit. Even those who were staunchly pro-Brexit thought we'd have a softer version than we have ended up with. It affects everyone, so that if you want to buy a bike, your choice is now less with added costs. We have not been liberated from the EU, we are burdened by not being in it with oodles of brand new bureaucracy and added cost! An item that needed one form or no forms to export now takes UK companies significantly longer to export. And there is no upside yet. No Brexit benefit.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Meanwhile in the real world...

Clearly, in this instance the Polish seller did charge tax. So the problem does exist. Companies may or may not adopt new systems to allow for them not to charge tax when exporting. Some UK shops like Harrods offer this, and you have to claim it back at the airport or such like. It is not simple, it is not clean, it is not easy. Many sellers are simply not bothering selling to the UK. Hopefully all of this irons out. But the truth of the matter is, we got a hard Brexit which impairs trade. The option that no one initially thought was a viable route - a hard brexit. Even those who were staunchly pro-Brexit thought we'd have a softer version than we have ended up with. It affects everyone, so that if you want to buy a bike, your choice is now less with added costs. We have not been liberated from the EU, we are burdened by not being in it with oodles of brand new bureaucracy and added cost! An item that needed one form or no forms to export now takes UK companies significantly longer to export. And there is no upside yet. No Brexit benefit.
Click to expand...
The VAT was only charged because the transaction spanned the first day of Brexit - that's no longer an issue. Off the shelf shopping cart software has dealt with which countries can and cannot be charged VAT for well over a decade now, it's not complex.

What you've stated about Harrods may have been true at some point but I know it's not been for a few years now. My wife and I were sat next to a Japanese woman having the transaction explained to her when buying a handbag. The refund is claimed and credited in-store, where you tell them your leaving date. When you leave the UK, you have customs stamp your receipt to show you have left the UK. You then post that to Harrods when you return home or use the drop boxes they have at the airport. Not only is that very simple, but it's now available to EU residents where it wasn't before.
 
Hassle that wasn’t there before. 50,000 new pen pushers that weren’t there before. Someone has to pay for them, or they’re working for free? From the guardian:

Leaving the bloc also means UK firms can no longer exploit the VAT triangulation scheme, which makes cross-border trade easier between EU countries.
David Lee, managing director of Torqueflow-Sydex, an engineering company, said it is now charged VAT at 22% on goods manufactured by its Italian sister company, which are then sold to another EU country, because it is a UK entity.
“This is adding 22% on to our costs, which in a competitive market is an absolute killer,” said Lee.
Lee’s company’s options include directing shipments via the UK or registering as a tax entity in every EU country it trades with.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
 
scaramanga said:
That problem no longer exists as the Polish seller would not be charging VAT.
Click to expand...

I haven't read the article but VAT for EU purchases are more complicated now, especially if you break the £135 threshold. You may need to pay VAT at the door if not applied at the point of sale, which is no longer required for goods over £135.

The UK has been written out of the EU vat system (and NI added back in actually). Also, there are changes in VAT MOSS for digital services because of Brexit. And there are potential custom duty changes depending on rules of origin. All a bit messy now.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Hassle that wasn’t there before. 50,000 new pen pushers that weren’t there before. Someone has to pay for them, or they’re working for free? From the guardian:

Leaving the bloc also means UK firms can no longer exploit the VAT triangulation scheme, which makes cross-border trade easier between EU countries.
David Lee, managing director of Torqueflow-Sydex, an engineering company, said it is now charged VAT at 22% on goods manufactured by its Italian sister company, which are then sold to another EU country, because it is a UK entity.
“This is adding 22% on to our costs, which in a competitive market is an absolute killer,” said Lee.
Lee’s company’s options include directing shipments via the UK or registering as a tax entity in every EU country it trades with.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
Click to expand...
The hassle wasn't there before, but EU residents had to pay VAT - now they have the option as to whether or not they declare it upon returning home.

Lee's problems aren't problems. Businesses trading overseas deal with these transactions all the time and with no more data required than what was already mandated by the EU for reporting VAT transactions.
 
Rorschach said:
I haven't read the article but VAT for EU purchases are more complicated now, especially if you break the £135 threshold. You may need to pay VAT at the door if not applied at the point of sale, which is no longer required for goods over £135.

The UK has been written out of the EU vat system (and NI added back in actually). Also, there are changes in VAT MOSS for digital services because of Brexit. And there are potential custom duty changes depending on rules of origin. All a bit messy now.
Click to expand...
The NI situation does complicate matters somewhat - the sooner the EU are paying for NI, the better.

There are plenty of other countries that deal with the EU and plenty of countries we deal with that are not part of a homogenous VAT system. It's neither complex nor difficult to deal with that - the world has been doing it for decades.
 
scaramanga said:
The NI situation does complicate matters somewhat - the sooner the EU are paying for NI, the better.

There are plenty of other countries that deal with the EU and plenty of countries we deal with that are not part of a homogenous VAT system. It's neither complex nor difficult to deal with that - the world has been doing it for decades.
Click to expand...
Those countries are not extracting themselves from a system they havebeen embedded in for decades, so that step has been very complicated. And it is not as simple as you describe for the customer. Who wants to pay an unexpected VAT bill when taking a package, which is what is happening? And suppliers are lumping on admin fees or estimated custom duty additions at the point of sale. So not unduly complicated but definitely moreso and obviously more expensive.

Reducing NI's relevance to a money figure is your thing, isn't it? At least you're consistent I suppose.
 
scaramanga said:
The hassle wasn't there before, but EU residents had to pay VAT - now they have the option as to whether or not they declare it upon returning home.

Lee's problems aren't problems. Businesses trading overseas deal with these transactions all the time and with no more data required than what was already mandated by the EU for reporting VAT transactions.
Click to expand...

Registering in each European nation is a right pain, and wasn't necessary before. Moving operations to the EU would solve the issue for him. And that is a problem for the UK as tax revenue, jobs and investment would be lost.

But who pays for the 50,000 new UK customs agents? Someone has to. The irony that we were being sold an exit from EU bureaucracy and we ended up with more not less pen pushers.
 
So I'm a 'remainer' but we have left now and we arnt going to rejoin any time soon. So I want the absolute best outcome for this country.

With this in mind can some one explain why we are not registering companies in NI and exporting and importing via there?

Would this not circumvent a lot of the problems, disadvantages of leaving the EU?
 
DTA said:
So I'm a 'remainer' but we have left now and we arnt going to rejoin any time soon. So I want the absolute best outcome for this country.

With this in mind can some one explain why we are not registering companies in NI and exporting and importing via there?

Would this not circumvent a lot of the problems, disadvantages of leaving the EU?
Click to expand...
We absolutely should. The EU are clear they won't put up a border, we should be walking goods across that border all day long.
 
DTA said:
So I'm a 'remainer' but we have left now and we arnt going to rejoin any time soon. So I want the absolute best outcome for this country.

With this in mind can some one explain why we are not registering companies in NI and exporting and importing via there?

Would this not circumvent a lot of the problems, disadvantages of leaving the EU?
Click to expand...
There is a long answer to this but the short one is that things may trend that way over time, particularly for new businesses, if there is no seismic political shock in NI. The uncertainty that exists now and the extra checks the protocol introduces is an impediment to getting raw materials from the UK mainland. So it's less risky to set up a satellite establishment on mainland EU at the moment if you have an export market there. We're in the early stages of Brexit so things may improve with the operation of the protocol to make things smoother.
 
Don't wish to pizz on anyone's strawberries, but getting goods to and from NI is no easier than importing/exporting from the EU. So currently, in our own country, we can't send sapling tress to NI from England, and a whole bunch of other stuff without all the red tape, charges and nonsense.

We thought it would be teething problems that would be resolved quickly. It just seems ludicrous really,” said Fulton. “The irony is that I can now get a tree easier from Latvia than I can from Britain, which totally undermines all the work on biosecurity,” he added, referring to the risk of importing pests and diseases.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...land-buyers-to-cancel-orders-for-100000-trees

You have growers ready to sell 50,000 tress to NI an area of the UK, councils in Ireland wishing to buy them and improve the environment, but thanks to Brexit, NI have to buy tress from the EU instead. Madness. No one voted for that.
 
Last edited:
SpurMeUp said:
Don't wish to pizz on anyone's strawberries, but getting goods to and from NI is no easier than importing/exporting from the EU. So currently, in our own country, we can't send sapling tress to NI from England, and a whole bunch of other stuff without all the red tape, charges and nonsense.
Click to expand...
IFAIK the NI protocol makes a number of concessions so it is a little easier than EU trade, though in no way frictionless.

I do know that some NI businesses are shipping out of Dublin to avoid the paperwork in one direction at least. Effectively the UK is an open market now as they have postponed inward checks (illegally in NI I might add) on the transit of goods. It's so that shelves are stocked, I presume, but it can't last as UK-based businesses are operating at a competitive disadvantage to their EU counterparts as of now.
 
Rorschach said:
IFAIK the NI protocol makes a number of concessions so it is a little easier than EU trade, though in no way frictionless.

I do know that some NI businesses are shipping out of Dublin to avoid the paperwork in one direction at least. Effectively the UK is an open market now as they have postponed inward checks (illegally in NI I might add) on the transit of goods. It's so that shelves are stocked, I presume, but it can't last as UK-based businesses are operating at a competitive disadvantage to their EU counterparts as of now.
Click to expand...

Right. Just ask Pig farmers. They are at a competitive disadvantage to farmers in the EU. EU swine farms can sell to the UK without the added costs from the checks, hold-ups and bureaucracy because the UK postponed our checks on imports*. EU pigs sail through. So Scara's claim that Brexit would make our businesses more competitive has not yet born fruit, quite the reverse. But there is time...


*There are checks going on its hit and miss whether things get held up coming in. We had hundreds of laptops held up coming from Germany for example.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Right. Just ask Pig farmers. They are at a competitive disadvantage to farmers in the EU. EU swine farms can sell to the UK without the added costs from the checks, hold-ups and bureaucracy because the UK postponed our checks on imports*. EU pigs sail through. So Scara's claim that Brexit would make our businesses more competitive has not yet born fruit, quite the reverse. But there is time...


*There are checks going on its hit and miss whether things get held up coming in. We had hundreds of laptops held up coming from Germany for example.
Click to expand...
I imagine some of this is do with rules of origin. Having a product not wholly made in the EU complicates things and potentially adds custom duty. A lot of exporters are just avoiding the hassle around this really.
 
Rorschach said:
There is a long answer to this but the short one is that things may trend that way over time, particularly for new businesses, if there is no seismic political shock in NI. The uncertainty that exists now and the extra checks the protocol introduces is an impediment to getting raw materials from the UK mainland. So it's less risky to set up a satellite establishment on mainland EU at the moment if you have an export market there. We're in the early stages of Brexit so things may improve with the operation of the protocol to make things smoother.
Click to expand...
Something, something, budget cuts.... COVID....can't possible man the whole coastline......

Sorry, but you'll have to patrol your own border.
 
scaramanga said:
No, I'm suggesting we move goods freely within our own borders - if the EU doesn't like it they can always put a border of their own up.
Click to expand...
Back to this. Any ideas that don't involve breaching international treaties, blowing up the free trade deal with the EU, and all future trade with the US, becoming an international pariah, and a return to the troubles with the death of more British citizens? I get that Boris cares less about NI than you do, and would have no compunction throwing it under the bus again if it served his needs, but he's not about to do anything as utterly stupid and vacuous as you suggest thankfully.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back