It is with a heavy heart that I must inform our United Kingdom customers that Stevens AeroModel can no longer fill orders for UK delivery, generated at stevensaero.com – please read on for our understanding of the matter.
The Issue: As of January 1, 2021 changes have been made to the UK VAT collection system. UK taxation authorities are now requiring our small business to collect VAT at the point of sale (stevensaero.com) and then remit this collection to the UK government. Failure to do so may open us up to certain liabilities and would also result in UK orders not processing through UK customs to their final destination.
Prior to these changes in VAT collection, our business dealings with customers in the UK remained well below the monetary threshold that would require our participation with the collection of foreign VAT taxes. And all collection of VAT taxes were (as they should be) the burden of entities within the UK. Under the new VAT system, these thresholds have been removed and we are being asked to collect and remit taxes (for all purchases of £135 or less) too a foreign government. Unfortunately, our participation in this new system of collection, creates additional book keeping and liability burdens for our small business, that will outweigh the profit received from orders shipped to the UK.
Possible solution for our UK customers: While we have always sought to, and will continue to – support UK based resellers of our product line, resellers are often highly specialized and do not stock our entire catalog. Even with UK based resellers in play, there has always been some level of demand, by UK customers, for direct sales. Therefore, we are exploring changes to our site that would allow orders over £135 to process on our site, while excluding orders under this threshold – that is not a great option but it is on the table. Another option we are investigating, is to make our kit products available on third party online marketplaces that will handle the collection and remittance of VAT on our behalf. In this scenario, our core line of kit products would be available on vendor sites such as etsy or ebay where collection and remittance of VAT is handled by ebay as part of their fee structure.
We will provide additional details here with resolutions to this problem as they are implemented on our end. Watch this space for updates.
As always, thank you for your past and future business. We will find a workable solution for all.
-Bill
Update 01/13/2021 – We’ve begun populating our core product line into both ebay and etsy. Links to these marketplace outlets for our products are given below please have some patience as the migration of products will take some time – if there is something you’d like to see posted quickly to these online market places please contact us:
As of 11:59P PST 01/10/2021 Amazon login and Payment services will be removed from our web our store. This change to our site does not impact transactions processed with traditional credit card payment methods (including those funded with your Amazon issued credit card).
