Good news in advance. The data confirms that Amazon has resolved the problem since the end of February 2023. We have not had any more cases like this.
What has happened?
Sales from FBA warehouses in Germany are sent all over Europe. If one of these sales is returned from e.g. a customer from Italy, the item can in some cases be stored in an Italian Amazon warehouse before being shipped back to the German warehouse (for resale).
With our data analysis we were able to determine that in the time period 02.02.2023 to 20.02.2023 sales were increasingly shipped from Amazon warehouse countries in which the affected seller is not registered. These countries were not activated as PAN-EU / CEE warehouses nor are they visible as "active" countries in the Seller Central.
These returns from end customers can - in the case of a sale - not be sold from FBA warehouses were they are at the moment. Usually they are brought to another warehouse, from which the sale is allowed, by an "Outbound" process. Obviously there was an error on Amazons side, which caused the shipment of items from unauthorised warehouses to end customers.
This has VAT consequences for the retailers concerned.
In the past years there have been isolated cases. At the moment there is a problem of a bigger extend, that affects a lot of Amazon sellers.
How to proceed?
1. Analyse
2. Document
3. Act - talk to your tax advisor
1. Analyse: Amainvoice analyses automatically if you are affected by these cases or not. A comparison done with the warehouse countries activated in the Amainvoice core data and if there were sales from warehouse countries, where there is no VAT registration, it will be reported.
IMPORTANT: You can only see this message, if the system automatically recognized that you are affected by this situation. The message opens up automatically after logging in to Amainvoice. If you do not see the message you are not affected.
The function of recognition is active from Friday, the 03.03.2023, around 10 p.m.
2. Document: If you are affected, Amainvoice provides an analysis protocol with all relevant information to each individual case as .pdf file. This serves as documentation for your documents and for the clear statement of all affected VAT business transactions. The analysis protocol can be generated and downloaded on the right hand side in the info-window.
If you are not affected by this situation, you will not see the button for the generation of the analysis protocol.
3. Act - talk to your tax advisor: Transmit the analysis protocol to your tax advisor and talk to him immediately about the consequences/effects. Should your tax advisor need help, please note the follwoing hint for the two coming up web-seminars about this topic.
Web-semiar for tax advisors and self-bookers
We have recorded an about one hour long web-seminar, in which the situation with all the VAT business transactions is explained. We are speaking about the reason, the consequences and the possibilities of the solution. Sabine Wirsching of Wirsching accounting explains as tax advisor in this web-seminar the possible actions.
The web-seminar is addressed to your tax advisor or to you, if you are a self-booker.
The recording of the web-seminar can be bought.
For this, please send an e-mail to: info@amainvoice.de
If there are any other questions, we will gladly help: info@amainvoice.de