New EU VAT laws are fucking insane.

does bandcamp not allow you to limit who may purchase your music by region?

  On 12/29/2014 at 10:12 PM, juiceciuj said:

does bandcamp not allow you to limit who may purchase your music by region?

that's not really a solution.

What the hell are they playing at? How are they going to enforce VAT collection on residents of the world outside the EU?

Well, watch the EU go dark in a hurry.

i don't like how im not hearing/reading anything about this anywhere but here and on a couple of music groups on facebook. nothing in my twitter feed, nothing on reddit ..blah.

Well then go post this guardian article in your twitter feed and on reddit:

http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/nov/25/new-eu-vat-regulations-threaten-micro-businesses

  On 12/29/2014 at 10:12 PM, juiceciuj said:

does bandcamp not allow you to limit who may purchase your music by region?

In a post bandcamp made earlier they said they will not enable this kind of functionality.

  On 12/29/2014 at 11:15 PM, data said:

i don't like how im not hearing/reading anything about this anywhere but here and on a couple of music groups on facebook. nothing in my twitter feed, nothing on reddit ..blah.

I don't know about anything about reddit but my twitter feed has been pretty much little else but this.

Does this also mean tourists don't get their VAT refunded when they exit?

can bandcamp email us a zip file?

actually, flacs are mahoosive arent they. must be a workaround somehow

The workaround is to organise a lobby group.

watmm small traders association. We even have members in belgium who can front for us.

"my cat will starve if i can't sell my micro-acid-beat-tweek-music, think of the kittens" /sell t-shirts stating think of the kittens, protest by not paying the VAT for the income on the t-shirts (it would probably be tax exempt because political group or something anyway)..

Maybe someone has read the legal stuff better than I have (I've read a few descriptions of it, not dug in hard though...) and can help with an idea.

I saw this site, patreon.com, a few months back and considered setting up a music thing on there. Quick intro: there are creators (of youtube videos, artists, writers, musicians, but mostly wacky internet shit), and patrons. Patrons pay a small fee, usually monthly, to get 'access' to...well, things. Maybe they see a public video early, or get an exclusive tour video tour of an artist's studio, or a demo version of a track, or whatever. The idea is the creators are producing a little extra and giving some kind of exclusive access to those willing to pay. I think there's another site or two that falls under the same category, but this is the one I first became familiar with, can't remember the others...

My question is, since the patrons aren't paying for a 'thing' necessarily, but sort of donating to the artist for whatever, wouldn't that circumvent the VAT rules? But an artist like myself could theoretically set up an account that offered a couple songs a month, and maybe a higher tier for a free album download or something of the sort? Seems like it could be a solution, for at least some of us music makers.

EU grandaddy legislators ftw! Signed the petition.

'will call Dutch tax know-it-alls today for in depth info, but can't say I feel threatened for the free/pay what you want busking on my pages, I think if you make less than ~1000 euro's a year the tax gestapo will ignore you.

Damn..this doesnt make any sense.

https://bandcamp.com/help/selling

  Quote

Does Bandcamp handle European Union VAT (Value Added Tax)?

Effective January 1, 2015, Bandcamp helps artists and labels collect and pay VAT on digital album and track purchases in the following ways:

• For each purchase that includes a digital item, Bandcamp automatically determines if the buyer is based in an EU country.
• If they are, we calculate the proper VAT amount and add it to the order total. As usual, the proceeds from these transactions flow directly to you (see Pricing for more details about how that works).
• If you know you fall below your country's VAT exemption threshold, a setting on your Profile pageallows you to disable VAT collection for domestic purchases.
• Effective March 1, 2015, a downloadable VAT report will be available on your Tools page. This report, organized by calendar quarter, will include the data necessary to submit a VAT return for your Bandcamp sales.

To report and pay tax for sales in which VAT was charged, EU-based artists and labels:

1. Register for MOSS (or "Mini One-Stop Shop," a website used to report and pay cross-border VAT) in your country. UK MOSS sign up is here. In some countries this might involve becoming "VAT registered" first. See your country's MOSS site for details.
2. Each quarter, submit a VAT return using MOSS and pay the tax owed. Your Bandcamp VAT report includes all the information needed for the return, including your total taxable sales broken down by country, as well as the evidence used to determine the buyer's location for each sale.

Under our current system, in which buyers pay you directly, the above is the easiest we can make it for sellers to meet their VAT obligations. In the first half of 2015, we plan to make payments for digital transactions flow through Bandcamp. Among other advantages, this will allow us to take care of everything related to digital VAT, including tax reporting and payment.

Common questions about EU VAT for digital goods:

• I've heard I need to keep lots of information about my customers for 10 years. Is this true? Bandcamp automatically determines your buyer's location using several pieces of evidence, including their PayPal country, their Bandcamp location preferences, and IP geolocation. Your downloadable Bandcamp VAT report includes the evidence we used for each purchase. All you need to do is store this report. The report includes no personally-identifiable information about your customers.
• I sell merch with digital included. Does digital VAT apply to these items? No, it does not. These items are covered by the existing tax settings in the "Physical Goods" section of your artist Profile page.

This is madness

At least they're trying to help, they must realize this jeopardizes their fundamental business model and they want to stay in business.

I urge any of you living outside the EU to not pay the VAT. They have no jurisdiction, and they're not gonna waste the effort hunting you down and putting you on some sort of blacklist should you ever travel to the EU.

This would make sense if they put a threshold on it in order to more effectively target the big boys they say they're after. It doesn't even need to be a huge threshold, somewhere around 500,000 euros in gross sales or something like that. You're not gonna kill the SMEs and it will ensnare the big boy foreign companies they say they're really after.

Either that or have all your customers register as a business, as there is no VAT applied to the seller on B2B sales if my understanding is correct.

  On 12/30/2014 at 5:47 PM, chenGOD said:

I urge any of you living outside the EU to not pay the VAT. They have no jurisdiction, and they're not gonna waste the effort hunting you down and putting you on some sort of blacklist should you ever travel to the EU.

It's automatically added to the price of the product, it's not an optional extra gratuity. The only way you don't pay the VAT is by not buying the product in the first place.

I signed the petition in the OP and there's another one for people who live in the UK too

Christ just posted this to Facebook...

  Quote

 

UK HMRC has published a flow chart which suggests that downloads sold through a third party marketplace are not eligible for VAT. Their guidance states that “if the platform operator identifies you as the seller but sets the general terms and conditions, or authorises payment, or handles delivery/download of the digital service, the platform is considered to be supplying the consumer. They are therefore responsible for accounting for the VAT payment that is charged to the consumer.” However, as Bandcamp’s current system sees buyers and sellers dealing with each other directly, it is not considered a third party marketplace for now.

Bandcamp doesn't fall into the category in the flow chart apparently

https://bandcamp.com/help/selling#tax

Going to need to just stop selling through them until either they update their t&c's or there is an amendment to the EU legislation I guess

I love it when the EU gets closer and closer to the kind of administrative caricature depicted in "Brazil"...

Good news for the bandcampers.

http://blog.bandcamp.com/2014/12/30/eu-digital-vat-changes-and-bandcamp/

  On 12/30/2014 at 6:24 PM, Timothy Forward said:

 

  On 12/30/2014 at 5:47 PM, chenGOD said:

I urge any of you living outside the EU to not pay the VAT. They have no jurisdiction, and they're not gonna waste the effort hunting you down and putting you on some sort of blacklist should you ever travel to the EU.

 

It's automatically added to the price of the product, it's not an optional extra gratuity. The only way you don't pay the VAT is by not buying the product in the first place.

 

I signed the petition in the OP and there's another one for people who live in the UK too

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear: I'm telling sellers who live outside the EU, (who are now responsible for paying VAT back to the EU), to not bother paying it back.

  On 12/30/2014 at 9:31 PM, Aces said:

Good news for the bandcampers.

 

http://blog.bandcamp.com/2014/12/30/eu-digital-vat-changes-and-bandcamp/

These guys are awesome.

Wow, good on Bandcamp. I hope that this headache doesn't threaten their bottom line too much, otherwise we might all be paying extra for the inconvenience.

Really ridiculous piece of legislation.

<3 Thank you Bandcamp

  On 12/30/2014 at 7:05 PM, Timothy Forward said:

 

  Quote

 

UK HMRC has published a flow chart which suggests that downloads sold through a third party marketplace are not eligible for VAT. Their guidance states that “if the platform operator identifies you as the seller but sets the general terms and conditions, or authorises payment, or handles delivery/download of the digital service, the platform is considered to be supplying the consumer. They are therefore responsible for accounting for the VAT payment that is charged to the consumer.” However, as Bandcamp’s current system sees buyers and sellers dealing with each other directly, it is not considered a third party marketplace for now.

 

Bandcamp doesn't fall into the category in the flow chart apparently

 

https://bandcamp.com/help/selling#tax

 

Going to need to just stop selling through them until either they update their t&c's or there is an amendment to the EU legislation I guess

Ok, that makes more sense.

Also, it's good to see some action against the tax evasion practices of those big global corporations. I know it doesn't make much sense in the context of bandcamp, but the amazons being able to sell a whole bunch of stuff and redirect the cashflows to places with low taxes Makes even less sense. Go eu!