- Original Poster
- #1
A couple of weeks back I received an e-mail from Amazon (a major revenue stream of ours) stating that they had been contacted by HMRC who said that we weren't registered for VAT in the UK and as such they believe that we currently owed two and a half years of back-taxes which they needed to collect on our behalf. We have never been offshore and have been VAT registered in the UK for over twenty years and haven't ever been so much as a day late doing (or paying for) a return.
I spoke to HMRC a couple of times and they said this who proposition was daft and obviously they wouldn’t do this as our account was clearly fine.
I fought Amazon for best part of a week assuming it was a problem on their end.
Getting no-where I decided to double check our VAT certificate online on the Government Gateway and on Thursday 14th September I noticed that under Business Type it states ‘Non UK Company (no UK establishment)’. Amusingly it then lists our address right underneath this as being in Devon, UK!
Unprompted I received a new certificate in the post also (still showing our UK address) dated the 8th September so I think this is the date that they changed our 'business type', even though 'business type' isn't displayed on the paper certificate they send you. We have always been a UK Company (and will always be a UK Company) so I have absolutely no idea why HMRC seemingly had this brain fart moment with absolutely no checks and balances.
Anyway, I phoned and spoke to HMRC and after checking they essentially said ‘whoops, that’s our bad, we’ll get it updated. Check back in a few weeks’. They couldn’t tell me why or when our company type had been changed from UK to non-UK. After several calls I managed to get the change request moved to ‘emergency’ but at the time of writing this still hasn’t been changed despite it being a job that presumably would take a couple of minutes. I am supposed to be phoned by a 'technician' from HMRC tomorrow who apparently will have the power to fix the problem there and then. Even when the change does occur I require a letter from HMRC to give to Amazon which could take 4-6 weeks to arrive then need Amazon to action it which could take another couple of weeks. I have got our MP involved too in the hope he can pull some strings.
Interestingly one of our suppliers have been in contact to say they have had exactly the same problem and by asking the advisors at HMRC that I’ve spoken to the right questions I’ve managed to garner the information that this is a problem that seemingly has affected hundreds of companies. One guy I spoke to said he'd dealt with dozens of people first hand in the last month who have been VAT registered for ages only to have their status changed for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
In the meantime, Amazon are holding approximately £100,000 of our money which was earmarked for paying suppliers. They have also written to me and said that based on the letter sent by HMRC they believe we owe almost £300,000 in back taxes. Due to the uncertainty of not getting paid for the stuff we’re selling on the platform I have removed us from Amazon for now which is costing between £5k and 10k a day in lost sales.
Companies go to the wall for much less than this!
Anyway, my reason for writing is really as I'm just looking to get some strength in numbers; others that have experienced this and possibly found a fast route to resolve. I think I might also serve as a warning to others to quickly just check your VAT certificate on the Government Gateway today and check that if you are registered in the UK that HMRC haven't just had a moment of madness and decided that you're based elsewhere! In fairness, if it weren't for HMRC trying to bankrupt by automatically sending a letter to Amazon we may not have found out for months.
If they have then changed your company type for no reason then please do let me know.
I spoke to HMRC a couple of times and they said this who proposition was daft and obviously they wouldn’t do this as our account was clearly fine.
I fought Amazon for best part of a week assuming it was a problem on their end.
Getting no-where I decided to double check our VAT certificate online on the Government Gateway and on Thursday 14th September I noticed that under Business Type it states ‘Non UK Company (no UK establishment)’. Amusingly it then lists our address right underneath this as being in Devon, UK!
Unprompted I received a new certificate in the post also (still showing our UK address) dated the 8th September so I think this is the date that they changed our 'business type', even though 'business type' isn't displayed on the paper certificate they send you. We have always been a UK Company (and will always be a UK Company) so I have absolutely no idea why HMRC seemingly had this brain fart moment with absolutely no checks and balances.
Anyway, I phoned and spoke to HMRC and after checking they essentially said ‘whoops, that’s our bad, we’ll get it updated. Check back in a few weeks’. They couldn’t tell me why or when our company type had been changed from UK to non-UK. After several calls I managed to get the change request moved to ‘emergency’ but at the time of writing this still hasn’t been changed despite it being a job that presumably would take a couple of minutes. I am supposed to be phoned by a 'technician' from HMRC tomorrow who apparently will have the power to fix the problem there and then. Even when the change does occur I require a letter from HMRC to give to Amazon which could take 4-6 weeks to arrive then need Amazon to action it which could take another couple of weeks. I have got our MP involved too in the hope he can pull some strings.
Interestingly one of our suppliers have been in contact to say they have had exactly the same problem and by asking the advisors at HMRC that I’ve spoken to the right questions I’ve managed to garner the information that this is a problem that seemingly has affected hundreds of companies. One guy I spoke to said he'd dealt with dozens of people first hand in the last month who have been VAT registered for ages only to have their status changed for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
In the meantime, Amazon are holding approximately £100,000 of our money which was earmarked for paying suppliers. They have also written to me and said that based on the letter sent by HMRC they believe we owe almost £300,000 in back taxes. Due to the uncertainty of not getting paid for the stuff we’re selling on the platform I have removed us from Amazon for now which is costing between £5k and 10k a day in lost sales.
Companies go to the wall for much less than this!
Anyway, my reason for writing is really as I'm just looking to get some strength in numbers; others that have experienced this and possibly found a fast route to resolve. I think I might also serve as a warning to others to quickly just check your VAT certificate on the Government Gateway today and check that if you are registered in the UK that HMRC haven't just had a moment of madness and decided that you're based elsewhere! In fairness, if it weren't for HMRC trying to bankrupt by automatically sending a letter to Amazon we may not have found out for months.
If they have then changed your company type for no reason then please do let me know.
