EU Shipping – Temporary Suspension
As much as I was trying to avoid it, on Friday 25th at 9am BST I will be turning off EU shipping at bluebellyarns.co.uk. This gives me the time to pack and post orders on Friday 25th, and ensures they are safely within the postal system before the deadline of 1st July.
On 1st July, VAT rules within Europe are changing. The threshold for collection is lowering to 0 and new rules are coming into place meaning I should be collecting and reporting EU VAT myself. As much as I am willing, and was expecting to do this using the Import One Stop Shop system, this will be impossible.
To sign up to the system I would require an intermediary in the EU. This would cost me thousands of pounds and is just not a feasible option for a small business. The UK is creating a portal to allow me to pay without an intermediary, but it won’t be ready by the deadline of 1st July.
My other option would be to continue to let EU customers pay as they do now when their order arrives, but in some countries this involves paying large handling fees. I am also not sure how parcels like this would be handled, or whether they would arrive at their destination at all, as the regulations say I should be collecting the VAT through my shop.
Some Small Good News
A small piece of good news is that I have an Etsy shop. Etsy, being a marketplace, are collecting VAT on merchants’ behalf. I currently only sell stitch markers through Etsy as balancing my stock or yarn in two places would be impossible and I’m sure mistakes and overselling would occur.
It’s a bit of a workaround, but if anyone wishing to purchase from the EU sees any yarn or markers on bluebellyarns.co.uk, I will be happy to create an order for them on Etsy so they don’t miss out. You can contact me via email, my contact form or any of my social media (listed at the bottom of this page) to request this.
How This Effects Advents
If you are hoping to order an Advent Calendar from the EU, please email me with your choices. I will make sure to save one for you to purchase once all of this is sorted out.
If it ends up not being sorted out by the end of September (I’m hoping it will be much, much sooner), I will send you a link to purchase on Etsy. I don’t want to do this right away as Etsy fees are high and all my pricing calculations assumed I would be selling through my own website.
Temporary
Hopefully these measures will be temporary. I will be keeping an eye on all information provided and will get this sorted as soon as the means for me to be able to do so become available.