Amazon Registration Obligations
If your company sells via e-commerce at Amazon, you must remember to take into account both the obligations you have to the local authorities, but also the obligations you have to Amazon.
Your company is probably already aware that you have a duty to ensure that the information about your company must be accurate and up-to-date. BUT the same obligation applies to the VAT registrations you may have around the EU.
If you have an Amazon Seller Account, you can quickly end up having up to several VAT numbers across the EU in order to use Amazon’s FBA solution.
You need to keep in mind:
- Does our company have the necessary VAT registrations in the EU?
- Is the information on our VAT registrations correct and up to date?
One thing is to be aware of which countries you are required to register in. Another is whether the information on the different registrations is correct. If you make a change in your company (the legal entity) like changing address or name then these changes must be registered on your EU VAT registrations in for example, Germany, France, Poland, etc.
Amazon closes your account
We know from experience that the consequence of neglecting this task can be that Amazon closes the company’s account in that country or globally. Amazon is extremely aware that all sellers are compliant with local (VAT) legislation. If this is not the case, then they are not slow to react.
If Amazon steps in, it could quickly become expensive. If your Amazon account is closed in one or more countries, the company will feel the consequences both in the short and long term. There is the immediate loss of revenue, but also the potential loss of customers if they search for other companies that have an active Amazon account. In addition, you will have to go through the process of being verified by Amazon again and thereby regain the privilege to sell via Amazon’s platform.
We therefore recommend that you always pay attention to your obligations and company information BOTH locally and all the EU countries in which the company is registered. If you sell via Amazon and have VAT numbers in up to several countries, then TIMEVAT have both the experience and the expertise to help you manage that you comply with local legislation and thus also with the requirement made by Amazon.