Ecommerce VAT

Ecommerce VAT is genuinely complicated, and the complication is structural: marketplace legislation makes Amazon or eBay liable for VAT on some of your sales but not others; UK and EU rules diverge and both may apply to you; imports, returns and FBA stock movements each have consequences; and the platforms' own reports — the thing your returns are built from — are notoriously hard to reconcile. Sellers get this wrong in bulk, and tax authorities know exactly where to look.

Acumon's VAT team keeps online sellers compliant across all of it: the right registrations in the right places, returns built from properly reconciled platform data, and the cross-border machinery — IOSS, OSS, import VAT — working for you rather than against your margins.

Marketplace Sales: Who Owes the VAT?

UK legislation makes online marketplaces deemed suppliers for certain transactions — notably overseas sellers' UK sales and imported consignments under the threshold — meaning the platform accounts for VAT on some of your orders while you remain liable on others, including your own-website sales. Misunderstanding the split produces double-declared or undeclared VAT at scale. We map your channels against the rules, so each sale's VAT lands exactly once, with the right party.

Selling Into and Out of the UK

Cross-border ecommerce runs on regimes with thresholds and registrations of their own: the EU's One Stop Shop and Import One Stop Shop for B2C sales into Europe, UK import rules for stock and consignments arriving here, and the low-value consignment rules that shift VAT to the point of sale. We determine where you must register, handle UK registration and returns directly, coordinate EU registrations through the appropriate channels, and structure fulfilment — including warehoused stock abroad — with the VAT consequences understood before the stock moves.

Platform Data to VAT Return

The operational hard part of ecommerce VAT is the data: marketplace settlement reports mixing gross and net figures, fees, refunds and currency conversions; multiple channels with different report formats; and returns and chargebacks that must adjust VAT already declared. We build the reconciliation from platform reports to VAT return — repeatable, documented, MTD-compliant — because when HMRC queries an ecommerce return, the reconciliation is the first thing they ask for and the thing sellers least often have.

Imports, Margins and Getting Money Back

Import VAT is a margin killer when handled by default: postponed VAT accounting turns it into a bookkeeping entry instead of a cashflow cost, yet many sellers still pay at the border and reclaim slowly or never. We set up postponed accounting, recover import VAT with proper evidence, and review historic periods for VAT overpaid across channels — ecommerce reviews regularly find double declarations on marketplace sales that qualify for recovery going back up to four years.

What You Get With Acumon

• Channel-by-channel mapping of marketplace deemed-supplier rules
• UK VAT registration and returns for domestic and overseas sellers
• EU OSS and IOSS registrations coordinated for B2C sales into Europe
• Postponed import VAT accounting set up and reclaimed properly
• Settlement-report-to-return reconciliations, repeatable and documented
• Refunds, chargebacks and multi-currency adjustments handled correctly
• Historic reviews recovering double-declared marketplace VAT
• MTD-compliant filing built on your actual platform data

Why Acumon for Ecommerce VAT?

• Many of Acumon's VAT specialists previously worked for HMRC
• All 90 professionals are based in the UK
• International VAT, VAT recovery and VAT investigation specialists in-house
• Ecommerce accounting for online sellers available alongside VAT from one team

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.