Ebay charge us VAT on fees but have just stopped issuing VAT invoices. Surely they are illegal?

[jfrm]

I run an ecommerce shop selling globally from our own website + Ebay/Amazon.

Ebay have recently changed the way that they do all their payments and accounting. They now hold the money themselves when taking an order in the first instance, deduct all the fees charged to us with VAT from the account and then pass us what's left bundled up into a single payment for all orders once per week.

In conjunction with this, they have stopped issuing invoices. I have always thought that it is illegal to charge someone VAT and not issue a formal VAT invoice. And that is my problem.

I have just been on the phone to them for 50 minutes (I kid you not). I showed them the gov.uk page where it states what is required for a VAT invoice. They showed me around 6 different reports and exports and some of which do show the VAT they are charging us. But the guy was unable to produce anything resembling a VAT invoice. He escalated to his supervisor who was also unable to help so that's their answer - there isn't one and that's the end of it, as far as they are concerned.

Am I going mad here or are they illegal? How can I deal with this?

 

[thetiger2015]

Have you tried the eBay Community?

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/URGENT-VAT-NOT-SHOWING-ON-INVOICES/td-p/6838695

People seem to be having the same problem.

I think they're making it the problem of the sellers to sort out, rather than trying to fix things themselves. Looks like their system is not set up and you'll end up having to go back over everything in a few months when they finally launch a fix.

 

[jfrm]

Thanks for the idea; I may post the same question there. The link you gave, though, is a different thing involving the VAT charged to customers. That was fixed a while ago. The problem I am talking about is about the VAT that Ebay charge to us on their fees.

 

[japancool]

Report them to HMRC?

 

[vivente]

They have split the invoices over two invoices. One for the subscriptions and the other for your sales. The one for sales can be found in the seller hub under invoices: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sh/fin/report/invoices

 

[Spreadsheet Accountant]

I often wonder about this sort of thing, Amazon non business tend to be not easy to acquire valid tax invoices whereas the business side is well designed for it

 

[Mr D]

I run an ecommerce shop selling globally from our own website + Ebay/Amazon.

Ebay have recently changed the way that they do all their payments and accounting. They now hold the money themselves when taking an order in the first instance, deduct all the fees charged to us with VAT from the account and then pass us what's left bundled up into a single payment for all orders once per week.

In conjunction with this, they have stopped issuing invoices. I have always thought that it is illegal to charge someone VAT and not issue a formal VAT invoice. And that is my problem.

I have just been on the phone to them for 50 minutes (I kid you not). I showed them the gov.uk page where it states what is required for a VAT invoice. They showed me around 6 different reports and exports and some of which do show the VAT they are charging us. But the guy was unable to produce anything resembling a VAT invoice. He escalated to his supervisor who was also unable to help so that's their answer - there isn't one and that's the end of it, as far as they are concerned.

Am I going mad here or are they illegal? How can I deal with this?

Ebay are not holding the money any more than they were when paypal was the preferred payment method.

Are they providing the invoices you need as @viviente says?

 

[Jack Turner]

I run an ecommerce shop selling globally from our own website + Ebay/Amazon.

Ebay have recently changed the way that they do all their payments and accounting. They now hold the money themselves when taking an order in the first instance, deduct all the fees charged to us with VAT from the account and then pass us what's left bundled up into a single payment for all orders once per week.

In conjunction with this, they have stopped issuing invoices. I have always thought that it is illegal to charge someone VAT and not issue a formal VAT invoice. And that is my problem.

I have just been on the phone to them for 50 minutes (I kid you not). I showed them the gov.uk page where it states what is required for a VAT invoice. They showed me around 6 different reports and exports and some of which do show the VAT they are charging us. But the guy was unable to produce anything resembling a VAT invoice. He escalated to his supervisor who was also unable to help so that's their answer - there isn't one and that's the end of it, as far as they are concerned.

Am I going mad here or are they illegal? How can I deal with this?

Follow this. Go to 'Payments' tab on your dashboard, then 'Reports', then 'Invoices' - it's there. They've changed the system due to Managed Payments, but the invoice is still available.

 

[jfrm]

Just to provide an update on this, Ebay are still displaying a message saying that they are no longer issuing VAT invoices. However, it is untrue - there is a VAT invoice for sales and it includes all the seller fees as described above. The old invoice link continued to be shown in May but the link to that seems to have now disappeared. So AOK, thanks.