Update: UK to tackle e-commerce VAT fraud

31 August 2017

The UK government has updated its plans to prevent VAT evasion committed by non-compliant, non-EU businesses that sell goods online in the UK and will now include the “Fulfilment House Due Diligence Scheme” (FHDDS), which will target fulfilment houses in an effort to get them to monitor their customers VAT compliance, in its early-autumn Finance Bill.

Part of this FHDDS scheme will involve the introduction of an approved fulfilment house register from April 2018. This register will require all qualifying fulfilment houses to perform certain checks on their customers in an attempt to detect and report sales without VAT and/or under declared customs values on imported goods.

The FHDDS follows on from the range of measures that the UK introduced in 2016 to try to deal with the problem of non-EU sellers failing to VAT register and charge UK VAT. Read our article which details the changes in full here.