Buyer asking me vat invoice

[eternity4u]

I am selling some items on ebay. They are doing good, the items are repair parts.One of the buyer is asking me VAT invoice.
Why would he ask me a VAT invoice when thier is no mention in the auction
The account is not stealth, and it's not like i sell over 500 items on this account per month, it's just around 200 items

I checked his ebay id, he is a seller himself but selling totally different items from me

What do i do? Has anyone got any idea?

Regards

[ebayerOG]

just send the item out without 1 and see what happens or even just refund him and lose the sale which aint that bad

[eternity4u]

I agree with you ebayrug.
I was thinking the same thing. But the weir thing is that, he just bought the items in the morning and wanted a VAT invoice few hours after.
It's not the sale i am worried about or the money. What if he bought my items to stir trouble.

I think i would just send the items and see what happens.

The account is a business account.

[ebayerOG]

just send it out see what he says when item turns up

[Alps_a somewhatlegend]

If your eb account is less than a year old maybe you can tell the customer you have just setup your business and you will be applying for vat/tax ect. in the next tax year depending on how your new venture works out, so a vat receipt is not available at the moment.

[Doubles]

There is no need to even be registered for VAT until your turnover exceeds £64,000, may have gone even higher since i was a customs officer in 2007, so just tell him that.

Unless you charged him VAT of course, which you shouldn't do if you aint registered.

Perhaps he is involved in some carousel fraud? Very easy way of making money a few years ago, they say they have cracked down on it, but HMRC is drastically underfunded and underbrained since the change from hmce to hmrc, most of the staff with knowledge took the redundancy leaving all the poor agency staff newly recruited to mess everything up.

[isitworththestress]

They may just be after a normal invoice, just some people seem to call them all VAT Invoices.

I don't know could the part or whatever it is be used for his business or be considered a business expense?

[eternity4u]

My turnaround is not even near £64,000. Ofcourse i know if it is i would get register for VAT, nothing like breaking the law and landing yourself in deep hole.
I have sent the items, lets see what he say. Thanks guys for your help and views, helped alot

[lucrative]

Was likely just after a VAT invoice so he can claim the VAT back himself on his next VAT return. I know i get as many of these collected up every 3 months as i can to help ease the pain of VAT payments to HMRC.

Nothing to worry about im sure.

[Layer Cake]

Nothing to worry about, like others have said the Threshold is 64k anyway.

I always look at the sales volume of my sellers and ask for a VAT invoice if I think they might be registed. Not everybody puts down their VAT number on their business info and so I often need to ask to see if they are to know if I can get the VAT back.

He was probably buying for his business and wanted to claim back thats all.

Just send out and ignore it.

If you are over the threshold btw (and I don't care if you are or aren't) then Stealth will not hide your paper trail if you were to be investigated.

[GreenBean]

Originally Posted by Doubles

Perhaps he is involved in some carousel fraud? Very easy way of making money a few years ago, they say they have cracked down on it, but HMRC is drastically underfunded and underbrained since the change from hmce to hmrc, most of the staff with knowledge took the redundancy leaving all the poor agency staff newly recruited to mess everything up.

Loving the underbrained part! Loving it. And how they mess everything up.