6.5 - Happy new Year/Brexit Update

Happy new year to every one! With the start of 2021, we bring you 6.5 which focuses on the updates regarding Brexit, tax changes and several bug fixes.

The UK has officially left the European Union as the transition period ended on  December 31st 2020. Businesses in the EU selling to UK consumers and UK businesses selling to the EU, will have to consult with their accountants to find out how they are affected by Brexit (if they haven't done so already). For example selling of physical goods will be subject to new customs regulations, import VAT and registration obligations. A useful Brexit checklist can be found here.

MOSS: Similarly, as the UK is out of the EU's VAT regime, sellers of goods/services that fall under MOSS (digital products, subscriptions, digital services etc) are also affected:

1. Merchants can no longer register for EU MOSS in the UK after the 10th of January;
2. The UK MOSS system will remain open for declarations for sales made in the last quarter of 2020;
3. Merchants selling MOSS products to UK consumers will have to register and pay VAT in the UK. READ MORE
4. The 10000 EUR threshold for cross-border sales of digital services inside the EU will no longer apply.
5. Non-EU merchants cannot use their UK VAT registrations to sell products/services to EU based consumers.

VAT Number Validation: The UK is no longer part of the VIES system, thus local VAT numbers cannot be validated via the EU databases. The UK has launched their own VAT Validation service here.

Our team has updated our Automated European Union VAT module to reflect the Brexit changes. We will continue to monitor the ongoing situation and provide automated tax support for our UK based merchants wherever possible.

Updates:

1. German VAT has been raised to 19%;
2. MOSS period has been updated;
3. MOSS destination rules do not apply for UK consumers anymore;
4. For UK merchants selling to UK consumers, VAT will be automatically calculated according to the type of product(s) being sold;
5. Reduced rates are unaffected;
6. VAT number validation for UK numbers is no longer supported. We are actively working in solving this and offer automated validation in the near future.

6.5 Bug fixes and improvements.  

1. We have split the "successful subscription sale" email template into two different emails. The 'Recurring Subscription Sale" and 'New Subscription Sale'  templates which you can edit separately;
2. Superbolt "/login" URL now redirects to the "/account" URL;
3. Removed plug&paid help articles that were showing in whitelabel platforms;
4. Fixed an issue that was not allowing discounts to be created without an expiry date;
5. Fixed multiple UX issues in the cart;
6. Fixed an issue with the embed code and copy-to-clipboard function of "Custom HTML" elements;
7. Fixed a bug that was clearing product information when updating variations.