Have you heard about the EU VAT law's that are going into
effect on January 1, 2015? As in 2 days from now? Will, just Google it
and you'll find loads of confusing information.
Basically
it means that any seller of digital items sold to a consumer located in
the participating European countries, must pay a VAT (value added tax)
to the country where the digital item was purchased. In order to do so,
the seller must provide two forms of evidence of the location of the
buyer, and pay the taxes, which vary by country, every quarter. The
seller must also keep this information for ten years. Basically this is a
LOT of work that is nearly impossible for small businesses like myself.
Way more expensive than the $1-5 I might owe in a given year.
How this effects me:
I
sell most of my patterns on Craftsy. Craftsy is not doing anything to
provide the needed information to the pattern sellers to be able to pay
the tax if we wanted to do it ourselves, and will not be handling the
VAT for us.
What this means for Craftsy: I will be
removing all of my paid patterns for their site. I'm not sure how this
will affect them, as many shops have already closed and will be closing
shop before the 1st. I'm assuming they will lose a lot of business, as
people won't be referring their customers to their site to buy patterns.
The ideal thing would be that this hurts them tremendously, and they
decide to help us out!! Even if that means they start charging a small
fee to sell patterns on their site. We'll see. (Not that I want them to be hurt by this, as I wish everyone success, but sometimes a little incentive helps the masses).
Etsy: is
sitting this out as well. Even though it seems they should be
responsible, they have stated that they will not be. Supposedly they
will sometime in the year provide information to shop owners to deal
with VAT, but who knows when that will be. A lot of people will be
discontinuing the instant download feature for their shops and emailing
patterns personally. Though this is only a solution for UK buyers, and
not for buyers in other EU countries. I personally don't have time to
do that anyway. My customer service would go down the drain!! I believe I
have found a solution that I can sell patterns to those outside of EU,
and can still include the instant download feature, using CraftHub.me,
which works with Etsy, and actually had better features than Etsy for
instant downloads. I'm still looking into it and don't have everything
figured out completely. But I'm hoping it will work as smoothly as is
like. If it doesn't, I may just increase shipping costs to $100 to EU
buyers to deter them from purchasing from me.
That
sounds horrible and that's what I hate most about this!! Reading so many
discussions and comments, and so much talk of people simply restricting
sales to the EU. My heart breaks for everyone who will be facing a
possible storage of patterns to choose from!! Not awesome!! I am looking
into working with a different website to host my patterns, that will
take care of all fees and VAT stuff for me. I will update you with this
info as it comes together. This will make all my patterns available to
all EU customers!! Wahoo!! I'm not about to leave you out!! :)
As
for bigcartel, I'm pretty sure they are not doing anything about this,
and I will be looking into another solution for selling my patterns,
perhaps on my website, or a similar host as bigcartel, that will cover
the VAT fees.
So what's the story for right now???
Starting January 1, 2015, I will be closing all my pattern shops. I
think I'll be able to get them back up and available the quickest for US
customers. It will take the longest for European countries, and
probably all other countries??? I'm not sure how long it will take.
If
you have been wanting to buy any of my patterns, nows you're chance,
until, I'm not sure when. There are solutions, and I am going to find
them. Hopefully it will be a smooth and quick transition, but really,
it's just a mess right now for everyone.
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Thanks for all your support!! I hope you are having a wonderful holiday!!
I'll keep you updated! :)
