HMRC Confirms that Channel Island Retailers are VAT registered in the UK to sell goods over £18

RAVAS have also been shown a letter from HMRC that confirms that Channel Island Retailers are shipping goods from the UK that are over £18 in value and operating UK VAT  registered companies to handle these transactions.  Surely if a company that is trading in the UK is shipping goods via Jersey back into the UK that is clearly an artificial abusive arrangement?   There is no reason to do it if you are already  on the UK mainland, other than to avoid the VAT ? Why else would you do it ? Please…send us your answers…we’d love to know.

3 Comments

  1. Things just get more and more outrageous the more and more this is delved into!

    The only answer is to avoid VAT! I would be amazed if anyone could come up with anything different….

  2. Hi i was born in Guernsey and have a large shop on the island as well as a online shop i wish this could be put to rest once and for all just for the record we being local dont want these massive uk companys here get them out of the island if the lvcr was left just for pure local business then there would be no issue

    1. Thanks for your comment. In theory what you say makes sense but the first major abuser of LVCR was Play.com a ‘genuine Jersey company’ which is why all these big companies had to go offshore. We know for a fact that some of them don’t even want to be offshore. They had to go there to compete with a genuine Channel Island company pumping VAT free products into the UK by mail and undercutting them. Complaining about them being there trying to level the playing field is not really fair. In our view if LVCR is used to gain a competitive advantage in the UK by anyone offshore, it should be stopped no matter who they are. That is what it says in the LVCR directive. Are you saying you don’t want competitors you just want to be on your own with the LVCR advantage in Guernsey ? Most UK record shops or internet retailers (the few who remain) are complaining about the fact they are about to go out of business. They don’t have the luxury of complaining about such long forgotten concepts as fair competition which you seem to be doing!

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