[Andrew McCann]

This isnt meant to be patronising in any way.

VAT may be charged many times on one item as it goes down the line. The VAT man however only ends up with one real payment for it.

VAT registered companies do a quartely return to the vatman.

Its an easy equation.  You add up all of the VAT you have had to charge out.. say £100000 then you subtract all of the VAT you have paid..  say £80000.00  You then pay the vatman £20000.00. This is how the vatman gets the money in the end. There are different vat schemes available to companies but in essence its the what you have charged minus the what you have paid principal that you end up with.

This particular issue is bugging me though.

Andrew

[Andrew McCann]

At last a question I feel qualified to answer, after working for a large Direct Mail organisation for some years.

If you send an item in the post through the Royal Mail to a UK address there is no VAT payable. When sending overseas, and when sending items with a courier VAT is payable.

Thanks for the info but if you look at the info Dave has posted this USED to be the case.. or at least this is how I read it. I hate reading official "not plain English" type documents though. I will pass it on to someone who understands it 

Andrew

[Andrew McCann]

  Andrew

    Regarding courier prices, have you looked at Tuffnells Parcel Express - they used to be very very cheap, when I used them we had them down to under 3 quid for every parcel sent (on a 3 day service). Granted we did send out atleast one artic load a day, but the was no weight or size limits on any package.

   Marc

Hiya Marc

Any supplier to our trade will tell you that carriers are the bane of our lives. I am constantly monitoring them. I wont name names but some are way worse than others. Its more about how they handle the packages for us than cost. They are pretty much in the same ball-park re cost anyway. I would rather pay a few quid more and get a great service actually.  This of course is on the larger more expensive items. For example one carrier delivered one of our trollies which go out well packaged and marked "TOP" twice on the box and also  "THIS WAY UP" twice again.  They dropped it out of the back of a 7.5 tonner and the proceeded to roll it end over end to the customers place. You can imagine the state it was in when it got to the door 

Yes of course if we were sending out an artic load a day we could negotiate a better deal. Thanks for the ino anyway.. I will have a look at them mate 

Cheers

Andrew

[Alex Gardiner]

Couriers!!!

They really can be a pain, but you cannot run a business without them.

We have been advised by the VAT office that we have to charge VAT on all courier and postal costs.

The trouble with this is it does add up the cost to the customer, the reason we started our firm was to try and reduce the cost to the average WC.

The most expensive thing to send we find is poles, the Minmum charge on this from our commercial courier is £10 on top of this we have the cost of the protective tube which comes in at about £4 the bubble wrap etc, sometimes we actually lose out on shipping some of the bigger poles.......and then we have to charge VAT on top, unfortunately to all customers there is no way round this.

Alex

[Andrew McCann]

Couriers!!!

They really can be a pain, but you cannot run a business without them.

We have been advised by the VAT office that we have to charge VAT on all courier and postal costs.
The trouble with this is it does add up the cost to the customer, the reason we started our firm was to try and reduce the cost to the average WC.

The most expensive thing to send we find is poles, the Minmum charge on this from our commercial courier is £10 on top of this we have the cost of the protective tube which comes in at about £4 the bubble wrap etc, sometimes we actually lose out on shipping some of the bigger poles.......and then we have to charge VAT on top, unfortunately to all customers there is no way round this.

Alex

Oh well that clears it up. VAT on postage it is then

If you,ve ever had a full VAT audit you will know that they miss NOTHING!! 

And I do have to agree with Alex. It's not just the cost of the carriage. There are the packaging materials and also the time it takes to pack items to take into account. When your prices are trimmed to the minimum possible this can make the difference between a small profit and a loss and yes sometimes it does cost us more to get something delivered than we charge out. Also like Alex our aim is to bring the best possible deals to window cleaners. Alex and myself are both window cleaners.  We do however have businesses to run and must make them viable otherwise our customers will lose the benefits.

Andrew

[twt]

now i understand but i still think its a total rip off. thanks for all the replies