General Brexit discussion thread

[Stevlin]

I'd like to share your optimism Barry....but IF the UK does finally agree to even one of the  principal demands of the EU, ( sometimes I think that Boris may indeed concede elements  that a truly  'sovereign ' country should NOT concede, in order to get the 'Free trade deal', which of course he promised.
The EU are still demanding/insisting that the UK accept deal inclusions which they would NOT in reality, expect truly sovereign countries to accept.
If my fears are realised, then Brexit will not have truly been achieved....and Boris, for all his rhetoric, is probably looking for some good press for a change, and his highlight could be ..." See, I told you we would get a deal....", without bringing home the real 'bacon'.

Brexit is perhaps dependent upon the 'eye of the beholder'...... but as far as I am concerned, a true Brexit is more important than a trade deal....and I would much prefer it by far, if the UK left the EU without a deal than retain any ties to the EU just to obtain a deal. The world is our oyster so to speak... which is not the case whilst still a member of  that undemocratic  political entity that masquerades as a mutually beneficial  'trading' organisation.

[T00ts]

Today is the 4th anniversary of the Brexit referendum and although we have left we haven't quite. Just another 6 months + to go.

Gosh yes you are right. It feels like a lifetime.

[Barry]

Today is the 4th anniversary of the Brexit referendum and although we have left we haven't quite. Just another 6 months + to go.

[Nick]

<r><QUOTE author="johnofgwent" post_id="28730" time="1591834186" user_id="63">>

In order to deliver those services, I incurred subsistence and travel expenditure taking myself to where France Telecom THEN had a regional office in Coquelles. Expenditure that included VAT paid as a VAT rated business to a VAT registered companyin Coquelles
<e>

</e></QUOTE>

So yes it is the scenario I imagined it would be.



Do you have information that if the same exact thing occurred today, after Mastricht, you can claim back the VAT on foreign incurred travel expenses?  I could be wrong, but my limited understanding says that you still can't claim it back today, unless you get the vendor (hotel or whatever) to invoice you without French VAT under your UK VAT registration.



The other approach that I think many people would take is to have as part of the contract that you must be reimbursed for the full cost including any tax amounts of any T&E incurred in delivering the contract.  i.e. if you incur VAT that can't be reclaimed, your customer should pay it.  If you did this already, I would argue that you can't then expect to claim back that tax as a double benefit in the UK. 



edit: This is what happens if you are an employee - my company for example reimburse me for the full amount of any foreign T&E cost incurred including the VAT.



Anyway - I can only speak to more recent times since about 2000, but to argue that this is an regulation imposed by the EEC or EU is not really a sustainable argument, because each nation within the EU has their own tax affairs and administers their own taxes. 



The main test I guess, is for you to try to do that again once we have had a no deal Brexit and see how you get on - I think you will find that you cannot claim sales or VAT taxes incurred in any foreign nation (EU or not) here in the UK - after all, France isn't going to hand the tax that you paid to the UK tax authority, so effectively you are asking them to give you free money.



It's entirely possible there is an EU regulation covering this, but the regulation will be about alignment and confirmation and not something the EU is "imposing" - as I say, it would be the exact same situation with non EU countries, and are then surprised when people don't like the EU.



Still, if my understanding is correct, this is a good and classic example of one reason why we are leaving the EU - authorities in the UK used the EU as a convenient excuse to people to fob them off, when the reason for their issue was nothing to do with the EU.



I'm not a tax expert or tax auditor but I have spend a lot of time in the past working on IT accounting and reporting systems across multiple tax reporting countries so I would guess that although I'm not an expert by any means, I know more than the average person on it.</r>

Travel costs and subsistence Expenses have nothing to do with the country you travel to. I travel to and deal with over 60 countries world wide,  I can and have claimed the VAT back on all expenses incurred within the EU. But this will stop 31st Dec and I'm more than happy for it to do so.

[Barry]

Sounds like they have a trade deal in the offing if this is happening:

[johnofgwent]

<t>On the subject of VAT the EU imposes limits

You can only drop it so far.



I think you have to have a VAT rate set to 15% or hogher.

Olus you don't get to choose which items are VAT applicable. "Tampon Tax".</t>

I recall the front page of several newspapers featuring Gordon Bown boarding the Eurostar to tell Brussels he was going to drop VAT on something. Green Energy I think it was.

They told him 'Non'

And suddenly his much trumpeted campaign to reduce VAT vanished.

But apparently it wasn't the EU to blame.

[Barry]

It's behind a paywall. So, who said your quote?

[BeElBeeBub]

Perhaps you have missed that by leaving the EU we have shown the rest of the world that we value them more.

Brexit has been massively well received by all the non EU countries. And a fw of the EU countries too.

Who see us as leading the way.

Really?

Here's a quote from that leading anti Brexit, anti government, left wing paper <checks notes> The Daily Telegraph.

The damage to reputation has been immeasurable. "What has become of your country?" one foreign diplomat asked me the other day. "We see only a ship of fools, and a plague ship at that."

And who said that? You can't just chuck unattributed quotes around.

Apologies, thought I'd attached link.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/12/britain-ship-fools-heading-rocks/

[Nick]

Perhaps you have missed that by leaving the EU we have shown the rest of the world that we value them more.

Brexit has been massively well received by all the non EU countries. And a fw of the EU countries too.

Who see us as leading the way.

Really?

Here's a quote from that leading anti Brexit, anti government, left wing paper <checks notes> The Daily Telegraph.

The damage to reputation has been immeasurable. "What has become of your country?" one foreign diplomat asked me the other day. "We see only a ship of fools, and a plague ship at that."

And who said that? You can't just chuck unattributed quotes around.

[BeElBeeBub]

Perhaps you have missed that by leaving the EU we have shown the rest of the world that we value them more.

Brexit has been massively well received by all the non EU countries. And a fw of the EU countries too.

Who see us as leading the way.

Really?

Here's a quote from that leading anti Brexit, anti government, left wing paper <checks notes> The Daily Telegraph.

The damage to reputation has been immeasurable. "What has become of your country?" one foreign diplomat asked me the other day. "We see only a ship of fools, and a plague ship at that." 

[BeElBeeBub]

<t>On the subject of VAT the EU imposes limits

You can only drop it so far.



I think you have to have a VAT rate set to 15% or hogher.

Olus you don't get to choose which items are VAT applicable. "Tampon Tax".</t>

Not quite true.

The minimum standard rate is 15%


But countries can have up to 2 "reduced" rates down to 5% (an excellent example would be the reduced 5% rate on some fuels and also building products). These were limited to either a defined set of products or country specific exemptions for historical reasons.

Countries can also have special "zero rates" and exemptions.  Eg zero VAT on essential foods or books. Which were also for historical reasons.

The UK took advantage of a full suite of these exemptions.

[Baff]

On the subject of VAT the EU imposes limits

You can only drop it so far.



I think you have to have a VAT rate set to 15% or hogher.

Olus you don't get to choose which items are VAT applicable. "Tampon Tax".

[johnofgwent]

So yes it is the scenario I imagined it would be.



Do you have information that if the same exact thing occurred today, after Mastricht, you can claim back the VAT on foreign incurred travel expenses?  I could be wrong, but my limited understanding says that you still can't claim it back today, unless you get the vendor (hotel or whatever) to invoice you without French VAT under your UK VAT registration.



The other approach that I think many people would take is to have as part of the contract that you must be reimbursed for the full cost including any tax amounts of any T&E incurred in delivering the contract.  i.e. if you incur VAT that can't be reclaimed, your customer should pay it.  If you did this already, I would argue that you can't then expect to claim back that tax as a double benefit in the UK.  



edit: This is what happens if you are an employee - my company for example reimburse me for the full amount of any foreign T&E cost incurred including the VAT.



Anyway - I can only speak to more recent times since about 2000, but to argue that this is an regulation imposed by the EEC or EU is not really a sustainable argument, because each nation within the EU has their own tax affairs and administers their own taxes.  



The main test I guess, is for you to try to do that again once we have had a no deal Brexit and see how you get on - I think you will find that you cannot claim sales or VAT taxes incurred in any foreign nation (EU or not) here in the UK - after all, France isn't going to hand the tax that you paid to the UK tax authority, so effectively you are asking them to give you free money.



It's entirely possible there is an EU regulation covering this, but the regulation will be about alignment and confirmation and not something the EU is "imposing" - as I say, it would be the exact same situation with non EU countries, and are then surprised when people don't like the EU.



Still, if my understanding is correct, this is a good and classic example of one reason why we are leaving the EU - authorities in the UK used the EU as a convenient excuse to people to fob them off, when the reason for their issue was nothing to do with the EU.



I'm not a tax expert or tax auditor but I have spend a lot of time in the past working on IT accounting and reporting systems across multiple tax reporting countries so I would guess that although I'm not an expert by any means, I know more than the average person on it.

As I have said all along, I do not say it WAS the EU who imposed this, I say - because somewhere in a twenty foot high - yes - twenty foot high - pile of paperwork I really ought to go through and burn nineteen and a half feet of - is the letter from HM C&E Portcullis House Westgate Street Cardiff (who were at the time a TOTALLY separate organisation from HM Inspector of Taxes Cardiff 2 Fidlas Road Llanishen, who were themselves totally separate from the Dept of Stealth and Total Obscurity who never gave me a physical address just a PO Box Number in Cardiff - a letter that "explains" it is an EEC imposed requirement - they SPECIFICALLY stated it was the EEC, NOT UK HM C&E who mandated this - that I suffer the penalty of being unable to reclaim Input VAT on any goods or services purchased outside the UK in pursuance of delivery of VAT rated services  to a company outside the UK for which I must charge and pay Output VAT.



I am no tax expert myself, I just know that if you ask the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's Armed Security Services and the Special Boat Squadron to detain a tax inspector who has tried to force his way onto the nuclear submarine base to do my work as my substitute, the said tax man goes away and stops bothering you.



I have no idea what the situation post Lisbon is, for two reasons. The first being that having been treated like this, I decided I would never do business outside the UK again ever unless entirely outside its tax system, and secondly that shortly after this charade, I found that I was actually spending more time doing VAT paperwork than i was able to claim back, so I started to have my clients arrange directly for the procurement of hardware and services they needed, rather than have me procure it, thus reducing my turnover below the VAT threshold, and then I deregistered.



I learned that trick from the builder who came to build the extension on the home I lived in at the time. Seeing the brass plate on my door with the Company Name, Company Number and VAT Registration Number, he told me over a coffee after pouring the foundations for the extension that he was NOT Vat registered, because he and his son did not actually turn over enough to breach the VAT threshold. This meant he could sell his services to me whether to me or my company, for far less than a VAT registered builder because he did not pay VAT and did not have to add 17.5% to his bills, but that my company would not be able to reclaim VAT on any invoice because there was none added to it...



As he then went on to say, this made him a more economic prospect than a VAT registered builder to the home owners for whom he did the vast majority of his work, but that in order to stay under the VAT threshold materials he would need.  He gave me precise specifications for the bricks, aggregate, cement, etc, and the details of three builders merchants. In the end I went with Jewson because they, unlike the others, took the whole order in one go, scheduled staged deliveries of the materials and only invoiced me - giving me 7 days to pay (i know i should have asked for more) after a lorry physically put materials on my driveway.



I know that overall, I saved thousands of pounds on that extension, perfectly legally.



I then turned my attention to my own way of working, and realised I too was wasting priceless free time at my weekends totting up figures for the VAT man. So I deregistered. At the time, my brother ran a computer shop - this was before the days where alibaba, wish, amazon and ebay destroyed the UK retail technology market - and he handed off the wierder "my computer is broken" customers to me. I was able to massively undercut the "competition" simply because they had to charge VAT on their time because their sales turnover caused them to breach the VAT threshold, and I did not because I stopped selling hardware so my turnover did not.

[Javert]

In order to deliver those services, I incurred subsistence and travel expenditure taking myself to where France Telecom THEN had a regional office in Coquelles. Expenditure that included VAT paid as a VAT rated business to a VAT registered companyin Coquelles

So yes it is the scenario I imagined it would be.



Do you have information that if the same exact thing occurred today, after Mastricht, you can claim back the VAT on foreign incurred travel expenses?  I could be wrong, but my limited understanding says that you still can't claim it back today, unless you get the vendor (hotel or whatever) to invoice you without French VAT under your UK VAT registration.



The other approach that I think many people would take is to have as part of the contract that you must be reimbursed for the full cost including any tax amounts of any T&E incurred in delivering the contract.  i.e. if you incur VAT that can't be reclaimed, your customer should pay it.  If you did this already, I would argue that you can't then expect to claim back that tax as a double benefit in the UK.  



edit: This is what happens if you are an employee - my company for example reimburse me for the full amount of any foreign T&E cost incurred including the VAT.



Anyway - I can only speak to more recent times since about 2000, but to argue that this is an regulation imposed by the EEC or EU is not really a sustainable argument, because each nation within the EU has their own tax affairs and administers their own taxes.  



The main test I guess, is for you to try to do that again once we have had a no deal Brexit and see how you get on - I think you will find that you cannot claim sales or VAT taxes incurred in any foreign nation (EU or not) here in the UK - after all, France isn't going to hand the tax that you paid to the UK tax authority, so effectively you are asking them to give you free money.



It's entirely possible there is an EU regulation covering this, but the regulation will be about alignment and confirmation and not something the EU is "imposing" - as I say, it would be the exact same situation with non EU countries, and are then surprised when people don't like the EU.



Still, if my understanding is correct, this is a good and classic example of one reason why we are leaving the EU - authorities in the UK used the EU as a convenient excuse to people to fob them off, when the reason for their issue was nothing to do with the EU.



I'm not a tax expert or tax auditor but I have spend a lot of time in the past working on IT accounting and reporting systems across multiple tax reporting countries so I would guess that although I'm not an expert by any means, I know more than the average person on it.

[HallowedBrexit]

Perhaps you have missed that by leaving the EU we have shown the rest of the world that we value them more.

Brexit has been massively well received by all the non EU countries. And a fw of the EU countries too.

Who see us as leading the way.



And if you think the US has a bad reputation globally, wait until you find out about the EU's,

Everyone hates them. China included.



Most comically of all, over half the EU hates the EU more than we do and we hated it so much that we left.

This is true. We are a global nation once again, and we'll take back our seats at the top tables.



The UK has been a major player throughout the history of the world.



Also, just look at this article from the Daily Express:



https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1283865/Brexit-news-uk-eu-collapse-european-union-talks-Daniel-Kawczynski">https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/12 ... Kawczynski">https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1283865/Brexit-news-uk-eu-collapse-european-union-talks-Daniel-Kawczynski



EU  :kikass:  :Patriot: