On Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:06:55 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:59:11 -0000, "nightjar".me.uk wrote:

And a lot are, was in a shop yesterday that had a notice saying the VAT
reduction would be applied as a discount at the till.

Unfortunately, that is not an option on a web site.

Only if the commerce package doesn't have the facilty for discounts, a
rather poor package if it doesn't IMHO. OK it might need to be enabled but
it should be there.

However, if they apply the correct discount, I wonder how many people
they will get complaining that they did not get 2.5% off?

Quite a few I expect, thinking about the shop mentioned above I think they
were going to knock 2.5% off...

There was a shop featured in Working Lunch today that were taking 3%
off at the moment as their system wouldn't allow half percentages .

I also got an e-mail from a website that has no shop outlet where they
are keeping their prices the same at the moment and adding up all the
reductions that customers would have got and having a draw among all
registered customers ( regardless if they have ever bought anyhting)
for what it amounts to.

Andrew Gabriel wrote:

Given that the price has been quoted inc VAT then there's no reason that
the supplier *has* to reduce the ex VAT price, but worth £43 to ask if
they can/will keep the net price the same and charge VAT at 15%.

Just heard on the radio - Government has put special rules in
place for this VAT reduction, and the date for the purposes of
VAT rate in force is the date when the supply of goods or
services is completed, not the date you order or pay for them

So what happens when you complete the supply or goods or services in
discrete packages, but only invoice for them on a monthly accrual basis
I wonder?

I also wonder if it gets more complicated if you are registered for
"cash accounting" [1] with the VAT people - since then the tax point is
strictly speaking not the invoice date, but the actual payment date.

[1] Cash accounting is an option for businesses with a turnover below
400K (IIRC), that means the VAT only becomes due on receipt of payment
from the customer, rather than at the point the invoice is raised. Handy
if you have clients that like to take their time paying bills.

or are invoiced for them. In the case where invoices and
payments were made before the reduction but supply completes
afterwards, there's a VAT credit note mechanism to get the
excess VAT back from the retailer, or if payment hasn't yet
been made against an invoice, the retailer can simply tear up
the old invoice and reprint with correct VAT amount on it.

Details are apparently somewhere on the HMRC website and are
being sent to all VAT registered businesses.

I shall wait with baited breath! ;-) (not)

(I decided the easiest thing to do with our consultancy clients that use
tech support on an ad-hoc basis, was to make sure all outstanding time
logged was invoiced at the old rate on the last day of November. It
seemed a bit harsh, but most of them are VAT registered and can reclaim
it anyway).

--
Cheers,

John.

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"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...
On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 18:59:11 -0000, "nightjar".me.uk wrote:

And a lot are, was in a shop yesterday that had a notice saying the VAT
reduction would be applied as a discount at the till.

Unfortunately, that is not an option on a web site.

Only if the commerce package doesn't have the facilty for discounts, a
rather poor package if it doesn't IMHO. OK it might need to be enabled but
it should be there.

Implimenting it would be trivial. However, I don't consider it to be an
option because the essence of marketing with a web site is to keep it simple
to use. Even offering customers too many choices can reduce sales. Expecting
them to calculate what goods will cost after appling a discount would see
them leaving in droves.

In any case, changing prices by a general notice is only permitted for 14
days from the date of a change of VAT, after which all goods must have their
corrent price marked. That is, no doubt, useful in a shop, where a lot of
stuff will need to be relabelled, but an ecommerce package can do it at a
stroke - well almost - it takes about an hour to upload one of my sites
after a revision that affects every page.

Colin Bignell

geoff wrote:
Details are apparently somewhere on the HMRC website and are
being sent to all VAT registered businesses.


A bit late now, isn't it


A detailed circular from HMRC arrived at small businesses in rural
Scotland last Thursday. It contained no surprises whatever.

But I agree, heaven help anyone who had to get the information from that
appalling 'Government Portal' website.


--
Ian White

wrote in message
...
.....
For practical purposes though HMRC have said that they'll be
sympathetic and not penalised businesses that can't quickly and easily
comply with the letter of the law in this quarter's return.

I can't think there are that many businesses these days that are large
enough to be registered for VAT and who don't do their accounts on a
programme that would handle that seamlessly. All we've had to do is add a
new VAT code,which applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.

Colin Bignell

In message , nightjar
writes

wrote in message
...
....
For practical purposes though HMRC have said that they'll be
sympathetic and not penalised businesses that can't quickly and easily
comply with the letter of the law in this quarter's return.

I can't think there are that many businesses these days that are large
enough to be registered for VAT and who don't do their accounts on a
programme that would handle that seamlessly. All we've had to do is add a
new VAT code,which applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.


Then you might want to re-read the HMRC guidance....

applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.

Should be,

- Applies 17.5 for tax point 18/11 regardless of invoice date

- Applies 17.5 for tax point =18/11 and invoice date 01/12

- Applies 15 for tax point =18/11 and invoice date =01/12

The software also needs to understand that any credit note received (or
given) in the future needs to credit at the original rate regardless of
the rates in force in the future.

Regards
Someone

On Dec 2, 3:08*am, "nightjar" cpb@insert my surname here.me.uk
wrote:
In any case, changing prices by a general notice is only permitted for 14
days from the date of a change of VAT, after which all goods must have their
corrent price marked.

So you tell every one the prices have changed and now correct
including 15% VAT but you get a discount at the till. That could be
kept going indefinitely.

MBQ

In article , Owain
writes
nightjar cpb@ wrote:
And a lot are, was in a shop yesterday that had a notice saying the VAT
reduction would be applied as a discount at the till.
Unfortunately, that is not an option on a web site.

That's what Tesco did for 28/11-1/12:
"All prices currently displayed on Tesco Direct include VAT at 17.5%.
These prices will be automatically discounted at the checkout to be
equivalent to the new 15% VAT prices. This means a discount of 2.13% on
all items."
http://www.tesco.com/vat/

And then made a complete balls of their receipts by failing to properly
identify items liable for VAT or the amount of VAT on them. "Oh you'll
need to go to Customer Services to sort that out", (they didn't), most
tiresome.
--
fred
BBC3, ITV2/3/4, channels going to the DOGs

nightjar cpb@ wrote:
wrote in message
...
....
For practical purposes though HMRC have said that they'll be
sympathetic and not penalised businesses that can't quickly and easily
comply with the letter of the law in this quarter's return.

I can't think there are that many businesses these days that are large
enough to be registered for VAT and who don't do their accounts on a
programme that would handle that seamlessly. All we've had to do is add a

FX waves

new VAT code,which applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.

One of the advantages of our manual (ish) system is it just requires
changing a % on the final field of BlankInvoice.pdf



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

"somebody" wrote in message
...
In message , nightjar
writes

wrote in message
...
....
For practical purposes though HMRC have said that they'll be
sympathetic and not penalised businesses that can't quickly and easily
comply with the letter of the law in this quarter's return.

I can't think there are that many businesses these days that are large
enough to be registered for VAT and who don't do their accounts on a
programme that would handle that seamlessly. All we've had to do is add a
new VAT code,which applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.


Then you might want to re-read the HMRC guidance....

applies 17.5%, for invoices with a tax point date in
November but received in December.

Should be,

- Applies 17.5 for tax point 18/11 regardless of invoice date

- Applies 17.5 for tax point =18/11 and invoice date 01/12

- Applies 15 for tax point =18/11 and invoice date =01/12

While I am aware of that, it is irrelevant for us. We always invoice on the
tax point date and the only supplier I have where tax point date and invoice
date are not identical, always has them in the same month. However, most
people send invoices second class post, so they do not always arrive in the
month they were raised, so we need to be able to process invoices at 17.5%
VAT even after the change..

The software also needs to understand that any credit note received (or
given) in the future needs to credit at the original rate regardless of
the rates in force in the future.

That is another reason for having a VAT code in the system that allows us to
continue to apply a rate of 17.5%

Colin Bignell

In message , nightjar
writes

"somebody" wrote in message
...

While I am aware of that, it is irrelevant for us. We always invoice on the
tax point date

If you're fortunate enough to be able to do that, then the VAT change
should be, as you suggested, fairly simple for any accounting system
whether manual or computerised.

and the only supplier I have where tax point date and invoice
date are not identical, always has them in the same month. However, most
people send invoices second class post, so they do not always arrive in the
month they were raised, so we need to be able to process invoices at 17.5%
VAT even after the change..

Purchases invoices are academic really, as the amount of VAT you must
account for is the amount charged by your supplier and I haven't yet
seen any accounts software where you cannot enter that amount. On the
VAT return it does not have to be accounted for separately.


IMHO it seems that a large number of people (and I include Mr Darling)
believe that VAT is only charged in the manner which you do (raise the
invoice at time of supply). In retail that is almost certainly true, in
many B2B firms it *can* also be true, but there is still that fair
percentage of business (I guess 50% ish) where invoicing bears no
relation to the point of supply.

For some of my customers it can be months ahead or even months after.
One invoice can cover many different 'items' and tax points, but still
be for a single job, or multiple jobs. An item raised earlier on a job
might carry one tax point, but as the job progresses, the tax point on
the whole job can change - and affect those earlier items.

One of my customers had some 12,000 transactions *already* tax pointed
and coded but not yet invoiced, where the tax point had occurred in the
week prior to the announcement.... the same week which was
retrospectively covered by the changes.

A huge job on their part just to check / correct the past...without even
beginning to look at how to deal with the future :-(

Regards
Someone

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Old Git
saying something like:

If you had read my post properly, where I said I wasn't sure of the
veracity, because I had not checked it out, or even read my next post,
where I corrected it, instead of being an arsehole who is constantly
trying to make points off people, I might even consider you to be a
member of the human race. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the
case.

Arse.