BREXIT: shopowners in the EU selling in UK

[burt]

It might be worth someone starting a "Brexit Implications" thread.  Definitely not for politics chit chat, but for how you, as individual shopowners, are going to approach and deal with the new changes that Brexit brings. 

[gritsop]

Hello All,

 

I agree with Burt that we should not take BREXIT as a politics issue BUT we should take BREXIT as a Phoenix PHP programming challenge. There are people here against BREXIT and people supporting it; we shouldn't turn the board into an endless politics arena.

I am running a webshop located in the EU (Greece specifically) selling internationally and the UK is a very good market that shouldn't be overlooked. 

The current status about VAT is that anyone selling to the UK via an electronic platform should be charging UK VAT for an order =< £135. When an order is greater than £135 no VAT is charged and the buyer should pay the VAT when the item is received (VAT paid at the post office, courier etc). The seller should open an account to HMRC so that VAT earned for orders up to £135 is payed to the UK revenue quarterly if i am not mistaken.

My concern right now is that the Phoenix platform should probably have the option to activate the threshold of £135 about applying VAT or not.

Just giving food for thought.

 

 

[Heatherbell]

11 hours ago, gritsop said:

My concern right now is that the Phoenix platform should probably have the option to activate the threshold of £135 about applying VAT or not.

That might be your use case but the case in UK is:

Quote

VAT is a tax on goods used in the UK and you do not charge VAT if goods are exported from Great Britain to a destination outside the UK and should be Zero Rated

.

[gritsop]

That's correct. However, OSC should be flexible to support all cases. OSC is not limited to just one case.

[♥14steve14]

28 minutes ago, gritsop said:

That's correct. However, OSC should be flexible to support all cases. OSC is not limited to just one case.

Dead right. Its something that a lot of people are going to have to figure out how to get working as not everyone that uses Phoenix is in the UK.

If I was you, I would contact either one of the core coders and suggest how this could be done. Failing that contact one of the other coders on this forum and see if they would be interested in coding something initially for your site. You could then pass the code on to the core developers, or release it as either a paid for or a free addon.

Could this talk be moved to a separate threads as already suggested by Gary so as not to pollute the original thread.

[Heatherbell]

44 minutes ago, gritsop said:

OSC should be flexible to support all cases. OSC is not limited to just one case.

CE Phoenix is ultimately flexible so contact a Certified Developer to code for your individual case.

[René H4]

Let's discuss EU-based shopowners issues regarding BREXIT here.....

That's for EU owners selling into the UK.

[René H4]

57 minutes ago, 14steve14 said:

Could this talk be moved to a separate threads as already suggested by Gary so as not to pollute the original thread.

@gritsop Please resume your discussion here:

 

[René H4]

13 hours ago, gritsop said:

I agree with Burt that we should not take BREXIT as a politics issue BUT we should take BREXIT as a Phoenix PHP programming challenge. There are people here against BREXIT and people supporting it; we shouldn't turn the board into an endless politics arena.

I am running a webshop located in the EU (Greece specifically) selling internationally and the UK is a very good market that shouldn't be overlooked. 

The current status about VAT is that anyone selling to the UK via an electronic platform should be charging UK VAT for an order =< £135. When an order is greater than £135 no VAT is charged and the buyer should pay the VAT when the item is received (VAT paid at the post office, courier etc). The seller should open an account to HMRC so that VAT earned for orders up to £135 is payed to the UK revenue quarterly if i am not mistaken.

My concern right now is that the Phoenix platform should probably have the option to activate the threshold of £135 about applying VAT or not.

Just giving food for thought.

 

[burt]

7 hours ago, gritsop said:

That's correct. However, OSC should be flexible to support all cases. OSC is not limited to just one case.

It's important to keep in mind that any changes that anyone needs does not always have to be done at the core code level. 
It might be possible to come up with some type of addon that would easily allow what you need to become reality. 

Matt @ecartz and I @burt are gatekeepers of the Core Code.  We don't place limits on what is done outside of the core code level, in fact we actively encourage shopowners to chat with our certified developers about "whatever module" or "idea" they have, and it might be that the developer can make something already that plugs into Phoenix nicely, or it might be that the developer approaches one of us to "bend" the core code to make "whatever module" possible. 

Put another way, the meaning of "open source" allows anyone with requisite knowledge to come up with solutions...

[burt]

Apologies to @René H4 for splitting out chit-chat in another thread into this one.  Because a couple of the posts in that old thread were of an earlier date than the first post in this (Rene's) thread, the merge means that the topic now looks like it was made by me.

Hope that makes sense.  It (hopefully) should not affect the conversation.

[Fredi]

OsCommers was created and continues to work as a universal international platform for Internet commerce.
Phoenix turns into a local marketplace for 1 country.
Do you want to trade internationally?
ORDER CODE FROM PROFESSIONAL.

Well then. Let's wait for the announced news.

[♥ecartz]

On 1/8/2021 at 11:44 AM, burt said:

it might be that the developer approaches one of us to "bend" the core code to make "whatever module" possible. 

I would far prefer this than adding something to core. 

If we modify core to make it flexible, then it is entirely in your power to determine how important something is to you and how you want the store to behave.  Whereas if we modify core to work in a certain way that happens to support you, it will likely break some other store owner.  So I (and I think I speak for Burt as well) would very much prefer to make core flexible rather than try to use core to meet each individual need.  It's more generally useful.  It doesn't exclude some people to help others.  And it doesn't get us bogged down in long discussions about whether or not the majority of shop owners want things to work one way or the other. 

Everyone wants to be the store owner for whom core caters every need.  But no one wants to be the store owner left outside when we cater to someone else's needs. 

Note in this specific topic, there is a straight-forward way to make things work.  Just apply for a VAT ID in each country to which you ship.  Then there's no difference between the way you charge small and large orders.  You always charge and remit VAT (sometimes to the taxing agency and sometimes to customs).  Alternately, don't ship to countries where you don't have a VAT ID.  Neither of those solutions requires a core change.  Many stores will find that they can do one or the other (unfortunately, not shipping may often be the easier choice). 

I understand why store owners don't want to get VAT IDs for each country.  It's extra work.  But it's also extra work to create a module.  If you are profiting from that module, then you should be able to pay for that extra work.  If you are not profiting from the module enough to pay for extra work, then you should stop shipping to the country that is making things difficult. 

A simple business level solution that would be extra work for someone else:  have UPS (or whatever shipper) remit the VAT.  You collect it on their behalf.  They take payment, along with the shipping price.  And they remit to the relevant government.  Note that shippers are highly incented to encourage these shipments, as they make money from them.  As opposed to modifying core, which costs Burt's time (even if I make the actual modification, he still has to process it and maintain it) and profits no-one.  If you can't convince a shipper to do this to get your business, why do you expect someone to do it for you for free? 

Note that the actual code to do this would be relatively small and trivial.  What would be complicated would be making it work correctly for your needs.  That's exactly what the certified developers do.  You give them money and they make code that fits your needs.