Perch is developed and sold by a business based in the United Kingdom. As such we need to charge Value Added Tax (VAT) to customers in the UK and EU.
As Perch is mostly sold to businesses we display our prices excluding VAT. Whether we have to add VAT and the amount of VAT added depends on your location. This is why you may have been asked to confirm your account address, we are required by EU law to be able to prove that we have charged or not charged VAT correctly.
For EU citizens, there were changes in how we charge VAT from 1st January 2015. Please read the information below for details.
For all customers, please log into your account and check that your address is correct. We will display a notice if we are unable to validate your address which will result in you being asked to update the address before going to the basket. It may be that some addresses fail to validate via the API we are using, if that happens we can issue a pass once we have spoken to you so we don’t bother you again!
As long as we can verify that your primary place of residence and business is outside of the EU we can sell you a Perch license or services without adding VAT. Just make sure that your address is correct in your account and no extra tax will be added. It makes no difference whether you are registered for VAT (or any equivalent sales tax) where you are, as long as that’s not within the EU.
We need to validate your address to show that you are in the UK. As long as this is the case you will be charged VAT at the UK Rate (20%) whether you are VAT registered or not. If you are VAT Registered you can claim VAT back through your VAT return.
We have to treat EU customers differently depending on if you have a VAT number or not.
If you have a VAT number and correct address entered in your account then we can sell you licenses or services without adding VAT. You then should account for the VAT under the reverse charge rules.
The changes to VAT on Jan 1 do not affect business to business transactions where you can prove your status as a business with a VAT number.
We have to treat you as a “consumer”. Until the end of 2014 we apply VAT based on the UK rate (20%) as the place of supply is deemed to be in the UK. This is added to the license price in the basket.
After Jan 1 2015 the place of supply will be deemed to be where you are. This means we need to charge VAT at the rate in your country and then pay via the MOSS system the VAT due to the countries our customers reside in.
We will be using the rates displayed in this document.
It is important that you enter your address correctly so that we can charge you the right amount of VAT.
The invoices that you can download from your account are valid VAT invoices and detail the amount of VAT charged.
The EU require that we have two non-conflicting pieces of evidence to prove that we are paying the correct VAT to the correct country. In addition to the address you give us in your account we also check the location of your IP address and the country handed back to us when we take payment from your card. This information is only used for tax purposes.
We would love it if we could sell digital products without needing to collect a lot of information about our customers. However we have to comply with the laws as they are, even if they make little sense for an international, digital business. The information we collect is held only for tax purposes, you can read our Privacy Policy for more information.
If you have any questions about this please contact us at [email protected].