Okay, good afternoon everyone. Thank you very much for joining me. I've said good afternoon,

but I guess that depends where you are in the world and when we publish this.

So thank you very much for joining us. This is the first in what we're going to call our content corners.

Because what we do is we recognize that when people are looking to expand, they just want some snippets of information that can help them

add to their knowledge base about what these different bits are when they're expanding into Europe.

So the first one we're going to talk today is about how you calculate VAT.

Now, the whole system of VAT is quite complex, but what I want to do is give you some really broad brush strokes.

Now, there's two

types of VAT you need to consider. The first is import VAT and the second is SALS VAT. Now import VAT

you can calculate by basically looking at your shipment. So the first thing to look at is what is

the cost price of the goods, the manufacture price or the price you pay for those goods,

or the value you put on the commercial invoice. So you've got the cost of the goods, and then

you've got the cost of the shipping and in the insurance, and then the import duty. So basically,

your import VAT is 20% of that whole price. So you've got the cost of the goods, you've got your import duty, you've got the shipping

and you've got the insurance, and then you basically calculate 20% of that cost, and that's

your import VAT.

Now the advantage of import VAT is you pay that as you come in, but as long as you're on the standard rate scheme of VAT, you can reclaim that, and we'll talk about that in a moment.

So that's import VAT in a nutshell.

To get your import duty, you will need to contact your shipper to find out what HS code you've got, and all those sort of little bits of information, you'll be able to find out from your shipper.

Now, the second cost is your sales VAT.

Now, the VAT rate in the UK does range from 0 to 20%, dependent on your products.

Now, what I would say is if you base all of your product at 20%, then that's a good starting

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