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Brexit next week: give me a positive effect it will have on my daily life

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Yes, and those that voted for him via the proxy of 'get Brexit done ' / a vote for the Conservatives IOW, need to utterly own this idiotic choice; and the many, many other failures about to land on them, and the rest of us, so hard.
We’re not even out the EU yet and the chickens are coming home to roost. “Difficult choices are going to have to be made” will appear on a minister’s lips shortly. It won’t be Johnson of course- that’s what fall guys like Javid are in place for.
 
Just quoting this in the hope our Brexit supporting posters might respond to it.... they seem to be trying to ignore it. One of the best posts on pfm IMO, thanks for putting it together.
So sorry Tiggers, but I am too busy to read it. Got 4 VAT forms to fill in and submit to the different relevant countries acoss the EU. They've only had 40 years to sort this out and show some proper integration but they have not done it....just one standard form even in their own language if they must, but with the same questions in the same order that all their websites will accept. It could be this simple, look:

UK
Q1. How much did you sell in our country this year?

DE
Q1. Wie viel haben Sie in diesem Jahr in unserem Land verkauft?

FR
Q1. Combien avez-vous vendu dans notre pays cette année?

ES
Q1. Cuánto vendiste en nuestro país este año?

Thats f@#king it! I could do it in half an hour like that. They only need the answer to one question, yet eg in Germany we have to pay for an after-market web portal in order to simplify the German finance department website and answer about 20 irrelevant questions in German every month.

Let's then take a look at the notary industry. Biggest scam ever. And they are everywhere in the EU. UK has pretty much drained that swamp to the point that before I came to France I did not even know what a notary was. I do now: they are lazy, protected parasite wvnkers, a design from pre-Victorian times. It's time they got in the sea. Why does the EU not look at some of the UK's progress in removing these unnecessary costs to trade and human life. Notaries are scum, yet part of the fabric in too many EU countries. You can't even become one without being in the clique. Let me give you an example in France. You want to buy a house? OK, they are probably going to charge you 3% of the value of the house to do not much more than a £600 conveyancer does in the UK. When I set up my German business a notary got 700 euros for drafting cut and paste documents and then reading them out to me in his office. Job done.

So I am sorry but my real world view from Strasbourg and Kehl inside the SME business community of the EU shows that they do not do anything like enough to grease the wheels of commerce. I am actually surprised there are as many SMES as there are in France and Germany. I'd be tempted to no bother being entrepreneurial at all and just get a job with the state or a big firm.
 
The experiences of friends with SMEs in France tells the same story time and again. The state is crushingly bureaucratic, and social costs of employment are prohibitive. I had one friend who managed to offshore his business to Switzerland some years back, it was the only way he could manage.
 
It’s a sign, Lord Lucan found!



The year after we join, Lord Lucan does one, then just as we come out he’s found again! I reckon Shergar will turn up on Saturday.
Britain’s back!
 
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So sorry Tiggers, but I am too busy to read it. Got 4 VAT forms to fill in and submit to the different relevant countries acoss the EU. They've only had 40 years to sort this out and show some proper integration but they have not done it....just one standard form even in their own language if they must, but with the same questions in the same order that all their websites will accept. It could be this simple, look:

UK
Q1. How much did you sell in our country this year?

DE
Q1. Wie viel haben Sie in diesem Jahr in unserem Land verkauft?

FR
Q1. Combien avez-vous vendu dans notre pays cette année?

ES
Q1. Cuánto vendiste en nuestro país este año?

Thats f@#king it! I could do it in half an hour like that. They only need the answer to one question, yet eg in Germany we have to pay for an after-market web portal in order to simplify the German finance department website and answer about 20 irrelevant questions in German every month.

Let's then take a look at the notary industry. Biggest scam ever. And they are everywhere in the EU. UK has pretty much drained that swamp to the point that before I came to France I did not even know what a notary was. I do now: They are lazy, protected parasite wvnkers. Why does the EU not look at some of the UK's progress in removing these unnecessary costs to trade and human life. Notaries are scum, yet part of the fabric in too many EU countries. You can't even become one without being in the clique. Let me give you an example in France. You want o buy a house? OK, they are probably going to charge you 3% of the value of the house to do not much more that a £600 conveyancer does in the UK. When I set up my German business a notary got 700 euros for drafting cut and paste documents and then reading them out to me in his office. Job done.

So I am sorry but my real world view from Strasbourg and Kehl inside the SME business community of the EU shows that they do not do anything like enough to grease the wheels of commerce. I am actually surprised there are as many SMES as there are in France and Germany. I'd be tempted to no bother being entrepreneurial at all and just get a job with the state or a big firm.

Without wishing to get into an argument as you are clearly wound up you might want to research the reason the VAT rules are the way they are in the EU... hint ... the UK is a big part of the problem (not the only part). As for notaries and the likes in France they were there before the EU and France didn't want that system changed.... surely as a supporter of the rights of a country to do its own thing you should commend them for their selfish vision :D
 
Without wishing to get into an argument as you are clearly wound up you might want to research the reason the VAT rules are the way they are in the EU... hint ... the UK is a big part of the problem (not the only part). As for notaries and the likes in France they were there before the EU and France didn't want that system changed.... surely as a supporter of the rights of a country to do its own thing you should commend them for their selfish vision :D

We can swizzle boxes in from China to France or Germany just as cheaply as we can into UK. But there is more paperwork in Germany. In Germany they are only looking at the paperwork, not the real situation. In France it is actually exactly as slack as the UK. The EU has been pointing fingers at the UK but there is no difference in the swindling potential.

What real life experiences can you give me about moving products in and out of, and around, the EU. I can give you about 600 per month.

As for your comment about France not wanting to change the notary situation, Gilles, my French business partner, is next to me now, and is still laughing at your comment.
 
Sorry, but we can swizzle boxes in from China to France or Germany just as cheaply as we can into UK. But there is more paperwork in Germany. In Germany they are only looking at the paperwork, not the real situation. In France it is actually exactly as slack as the UK. The EU has been pointing fingers at the UK but there is no difference in the swindling potential.

What rel life experiences can you give me about moving products in and out and around the EU. I can give you about 600 per month.

As for your comment about France not wanting to change the notary situation, Gilles, my French business partner, is next to me now, and is still laughing at your comment.

He can laugh all he likes, but it was proposed in the early 1990s and the French government didn't want to know. I had a friend who had a business that bought and sold properties for renovation in France and hence followed the situation quite closely.

As for moving products around the EU up until 3 years ago I had a software company, our biggest client shipped 1000 products a day around the EU and we built the systems to handle the customs and financial paperwork for moving these across any border within the EU and in and out of it, it's really not that difficult if you systemise it flexibly and properly, but you know better I guess so I'll bow out now.
 
it was proposed in the early 1990s and the French government didn't want to know.

As for moving products around the EU up until 3 years ago I had a software company, our biggest client shipped 1000 products a day around the EU and we built the systems to handle the customs and financial paperwork for moving these across any border within the EU and in and out of it, it's really not that difficult if you systemise it flexibly and properly, but you know better I guess so I'll bow out now.

Early 1990s...French government.....two issues there.

Bully for your big client. We don't have the cash to pay for stuff like that.

If I had to bet, I would bet that I do know more than you about the VAT situation in Europe, so I accept your offer to bow out.
 
Early 1990s...French government.....two issues there.

Bully for your big client. We don't have the cash to pay for stuff like that.

If I had to bet, I would bet that I do know more than you about the VAT situation in Europe, so I accept your offer to bow out.

Sorry but you asked for real world experience so I responded. That was all there was to it.

Don't be pissed, there are people that know the same stuff you do (maybe better than you, maybe not - who cares) and yes maybe having more cash to sort it out does help. Anyway let's not fall out over it.
 
There's no doubt that it's easier to do business in UK - it's the only thing I can find that's positive about the Thatcher years. Coming back from a few years in Denmark, which is the nearest thing to socialism that works (and I mean that positively), the tax rules and and red tape are so much simpler. But that's nothing to do with EU IMO. It was a choice that was made locally (using that thing sovereignty that we lost). The French/Germans could do the same if they want to but there are too many vested interests.
I import from Denmark, Germany, Poland and France, and the EU has made pretty much everything simpler. The only fly in the ointment has been CE marking, but I can see the rationale, especially when there are frankly dangerous China Export products getting on to the streets through Amazon/Ebay channels.
I'm in the process of buying a German company, but the accounting practices and legal obstacles are starting to make me think again. Once more, nothing to do with EU.
 
I'm in the process of buying a German company, but the accounting practices and legal obstacles are starting to make me think again. Once more, nothing to do with EU.

The EU project has a responsibility here. OK, the EU did not create all these differing accounting practices, but they are doing what to smooth things out across member states? IN 5 years, I have seen or heard of nothing. The VAT example is very clear. It is so simple to sort out. And it is a big deal. Not to most on pfm...but any small business wishing to trade around the EU has an unnecessary amount of paperwork to do.

Beware German companies, I have one. You cannot mothball them if things don't go well. You have to shut it down or account as per normal...and the closure process takes between 12-24 months. 4 years is one quote I had. And you have to submit full accounts and VAT declarations as if the company was still trading until it closes. Only you or a German accountant can submit the papers. Not a UK or Danish accountant. So in my case it was a German accountant. He charges me 1300 euros per year to submit accounts with a 0 in every box. The notary wants 700 euros to shut it down. I have not started the process yet, but it looks like it will cost another 3,000 euros to close it. And you have to time it very precisely to make sure it does not hang over into a following year. If you can't close it by January, then you need to submit the accounts for that year.

It was the worst business decision I have ever made. I am now trading via a French company and we have a 'representative office' in Germany. Miles better.
 
How important is it for you to have a local presence? I'm not sure of the details of what you do, but siting yourself in dreilandepunkt surely self-inflicts local bureaucracy. I would have thought it made more sense to do it all from a tax jurisdiction you know, i.e. UK.

Oh, hang on
 
@richgilb I'm surprised you have difficulties with VAT.. Is the problem a high number of transactions that prevent you coding your invoices as you go, or are you holding goods under bond in those countries (something that does make the process a lot more complex, but it would remain so no matter what the EU did)? Whole-year returns are a ball-ache, but a couple of hours with a tax professional and taking detailed notes of what they say for each box is a one-off cost that repays later.

As for the EU's role, one obvious step forward was the VIES system, where you can immediately validate the VAT number and registration details of any trader. http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/ If you're exporting VAT-rated goods and services, it's a huge benefit.

VAT harmonisation is something that every member country of the EU wants... provided that all the others harmonise to their specific system. It has very slowly been improving (the annual trading returns are starting to ask more of the same questions than they used to, and the sums you do to answer them are becoming more similar), but overnight change would hurt business more, and increase the risks of fraud.

@Nero richgilb would need to remit VAT to an EU member state once his sales to that country exceeded €70k/year or so. This is a rule that was brought in to prevent online sellers siting themselves int the lowest-VAT territory they could find, and then selling across Europe at "lower" prices as a result.

[EDIT: ... and to think I dropped accounting in school, firm in the belief that a career in computing would have no need for it. Ah, the innocence of youth... ]
 
Yes, I suppose it's different in the online world, I wouldn't know. I only have to think about Intrastat. I wonder how that will work out?
 
@richgilb I'm surprised you have difficulties with VAT.. Is the problem a high number of transactions that prevent you coding your invoices as you go, or are you holding goods under bond in those countries (something that does make the process a lot more complex, but it would remain so no matter what the EU did)? Whole-year returns are a ball-ache, but a couple of hours with a tax professional and taking detailed notes of what they say for each box is a one-off cost that repays later.

As for the EU's role, one obvious step forward was the VIES system, where you can immediately validate the VAT number and registration details of any trader. http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/ If you're exporting VAT-rated goods and services, it's a huge benefit.

VAT harmonisation is something that every member country of the EU wants... provided that all the others harmonise to their specific system. It has very slowly been improving (the annual trading returns are starting to ask more of the same questions than they used to, and the sums you do to answer them are becoming more similar), but overnight change would hurt business more, and increase the risks of fraud.

@Nero richgilb would need to remit VAT to an EU member state once his sales to that country exceeded €70k/year or so. This is a rule that was brought in to prevent online sellers siting themselves int the lowest-VAT territory they could find, and then selling across Europe at "lower" prices as a result.

[EDIT: ... and to think I dropped accounting in school, firm in the belief that a career in computing would have no need for it. Ah, the innocence of youth... ]

Regarding VIES, they ignored those crucial business at the end of the line. B2C. Not many business chains stop at B2B. So the entire chain is not serviced properly by VIES in that the business at the end still has the shit to deal with. That business is me and thosuands of others.

The UK has a fantastic VAT scheme that needs extending to all B2C companies, the flat rate scheme. And one form for intra country VAT to be paid.

So there is that...then imagine the amount of transactions for this customer in the context of one sale. VAT on the sale, VAT on the postage depends which service, VAT on the card payment provider or paypal depends where the provider is based....amazon pays every week and takes its 15% off the weekly payment into the bank (they do not pay by sales transaction), so you have to add that back when reconciling and then calculate the VAT (do that 5 times as we are in amazon.es, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr , amazon.it and amazon.co.uk).

We don't have the budget for handing it all to accountants and investing in flash systems, we depend on the standard shopify web platform, which cannot cope with intra-country VAT and our own man hours. So we want the EU to intervene and simplify.

Everyone shoots me down when I suggest this...but B2C businesses should only have to pay a sales tax....unless member states have an easier solution? Mostly people say VAT is better, but it is not good enough for B2C. I also spend too much time talking to my partner and discussing VAT traps. VAT across the EU is what is making me consider selling the other half of my business. We have a strategy /dream to market to companies outside the EU so we claim the input and pay nothing on the output. If we can realise that, I may stay on. We would only have one VAT form to fill in then. And it would be about getting VAT back, not paying it, so worth spending time on.

In another thread, I may get sympathy, but in the pursuit of highlighting EU inertia /incompetence, I get the feeling that people think we are doing something wrong. In my opinion we are. We should just stop paying it, fly by the seat of our pants until we get caught and then disappear to Asia with the cash we saved / made.
 
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How important is it for you to have a local presence? I'
Very....customers still don't really like buying online from other countries if they can buy it in their own country. That feeling is not going away in my lifetime. We won't rank as highly on ebay or google if our products are not in UK, France and Germany. Postage costs are already 8% of the sale....add international postage and we are talking maybe 13%.
 
Hopefully this will be the last Tory government for a very long time as they now own Brexit outright and there is no economic or social upside to it. Yay! A positive!

The last Tory government for a very long time? That's hopelessly optimistic TBH Tony; in fact it's more likely to be the opposite unless the Labour party sort themselves out some time soon!
 
Regarding VIES, they ignored those crucial business at the end of the line. B2C. Not many business chains stop at B2B. So the entire chain is not serviced properly by VIES in that the business at the end still has the shit to deal with. That business is me and thosuands of others.

So there is that...then imagine the amount of transactions for this customer in the context of one sale. VAT on the sale, VAT on the postage depends which service, VAT on the card payment provider or paypal depends where the provider is based....amazon pays every week and takes its 15% off the weekly payment into the bank (they do not pay by sales transaction), so you have to add that back when reconciling and then calculate the VAT (do that 5 times as we are in amazon.es, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr , amazon.it and amazon.co.uk).
Ah, Amazon and Paypal. You have my sympathies. They make life utter shit for their business customers, and Amazon's arbitrary separation of business makes no sense - there is actually only one Amazon company, despite the five websites. At least you don't have the additional problem we have in Ireland: selling from Ireland to Ireland on Amazon's platform requires dealing with a company that prices in a foreign currency, incurring a currency risk on every sale (Amazon.co.uk prices in GBP, as you'd expect, but we operate in Euro). Last August, when the GBP dropped 10%, this really hurt businesses.

Regarding the issue of VAT itself, does it make life easier if you compose your shipments into a single-rated sale? The product is unusable without the payment fees and shipping, so you are permitted to charge VAT for those services at the same rate as the goods being shipped: provided that the goods are the largest-value part of the shipment, of course. Doing this means you don't have to deal with different VAT rates on each invoice, just a single code. This can result in higher end prices, though.

(This composition priniciple is in every VAT system in some form or other, but please don't take accountancy advice from a computer programmer... even one who had to implement it once)

We dont have the buydget for handing it all to accountants and investing in flash systems, we depend on the standard shopify web platform, which cannot cope with intra-country VAT and our own man hours. So we want the EU to intervene and simplify.
They are trying, but the national governments all believe that their own VAT arrangements maximise revenue to them, and the EU doesn't have any power to make them change these. It's a long, slow, road that stretches back decades.

Everyone shoots me down when I suggest this...but B2C businesses should only have to pay a sales tax....unless member states have an easier solution? Mostly people say VAT is better, but it is not good enough for B2C. I also spend too much time talking to my partner and discussing VAT traps. VAT across the EU is what s making me consider selling the other half of my business.
Sales tax would probably lose you money - you'd still be liable for VAT on inputs, and you'd have to charge sales tax on outputs.

We have a strategy /dream to market to companies outside the EU so we claim the input and pay nothing on the output.
A modification of that: see if you can get agents to set up in your main EU markets, and move to a wholesale business, serving them. You get the same zero outputs, fewer invoices, and you don't have to deal with international tariffs and customs - something I wouldn't wish on any small business.

In another thread, I may get sympathy, but in the pursuit of highlighting EU inertia /incompetence, I get the feeling that people think we are doing something wrong. In my opinion we are/. We should just stop paying it, fly by the seat o ouyr pantsuntil we get caught and then disappear to Asia wiht the cah we saved / made.
You do have my sympathy, but I feel you're being let down by Amazon more than the EU. Everything you need to make your life easy is within their power to give to you, but they have chosen to organise their European businesses into five silos that don't allow common trader accounts.
From the EU side, yes "incompetence" is actually the reason, but not in the sense you used it. The EU doesn't have power to force this change on the member governments. What you're looking for actually requires a stronger EU.
 
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