E-Commerce and UK Tax Changes

The UK VAT office will be increasing VAT again to 20% on Jan 4th 2011

How does this affect your E-Commerce Systems?

It's very simple to change the VAT tax value on most e-commerce systems. Tax values such as VAT have an attribute or a value programmed to 17.5%. Your developers will simply need to change this attribute to 20%, which should be fairly quick to do in most cases. The Learnebusiness.com site, for example will take me about 5 minutes to do. Be cautious about companies demanding huge sums of money to make this alteration on your e-commerce web site.

Who do UK businesses charge VAT?

I thought it would be useful to clarify here, who British Companies charge VAT to. UK VAT registered companies should only charge VAT for services and products delivered in European Union Countries. Services and products delivered outside of the EU are VAT exempt.

Further information regarding VAT can be found via the UK Revenue and Customs Web site

Learn how to implement e-commerce profitably! 5-day E-Commerce Management Course - COB Certified E-Commerce manager

Need help with e-commerce? For help with your e-commerce planning, managing the implementation or increasing your sales visit our e-commerce consultancy information pages.