An Enterprise CEO's Summary Guide To VAT

You are absolutely right. Small business IT gives you a overall exposure to IT. Also the challenges here are very different. Emphasis is less on processes and procedures but more on getting things done. Small Business IT enables the business and is a strategic partner to the growth of the business. It is not a cost center. Another challenge is to provide best of breed IT with limited resources. Use of open source tools and home grown scripts play a big part here.

I intend to provide a glimpse of what it is like to be in Small business IT in this blog

Report Proves "Employees Matter" to Your Bottom Line

interested parties (eg. the UK Revenue System) might be curious and ask: "sure, you're compliant with European Directives now, but what about the past 4 years…?"

In effect, what every European resident should have done in the past 4 years is to get the bill from LL and pay reverse VAT on it in their country of residence — which is also part of the European taxation laws. Put into other words: US companies are not liable to "tax fraud" if they forget to bill us VAT for the services we acquire — although they might get a nasty shock by being forbidden to transact in European commerce if they neglect to comply with European law — but we European taxpayers are — so if we did not revere-charge ourselves with VAT voluntarily, we are to blame (by our local revenue services) — not LL!

What LL just did is to prevent European residents to "forget" to pay for their taxes… by enforcing them on behalf of our nice European revenue services.

So, no, I disagree that LL has any moral grounds for somehow granting a benefit (a discount; a delay in the application of the appropriate tax laws; a postponement) to people who don't wish to pay their taxes! In effect, if they did that — and now that they're also an UK company, they're much closely watched — I'm pretty sure that this would be very likely viewed as a minor form of incitement to tax evasion and embezzlement, besides being against the dumping laws in Europe, so this would look even worse to LL, if they somehow projected the image that they wanted to be "nice" on 5 million users and sort of "minimise" the impact of their taxes. I'm not sure how good that would look on their public relations!

Then there is the issue of "fair warning" or the way they should communicate to us how they are complying with European laws. Well, I can only remind to you how PayPal treats their customers: they lock your account for 6-18 months first, without even giving you a clue on why it was locked, until after much begging and email/fax exchanges you find out that you have violated some obscure minor law in Europe. After those months of patiently trying to get your account back, you find out that it was wiped clean of any money you might have on it — since PayPal has this nice ToS, legally unsustainable in Europe, that they can take your money away every time they wish and cancel your account at whim.

Well, LL also has a nice ToS basically telling us the same thing — but at least they give us a last-minute-warning I'm not saying that they're doing it well — God knows they aren't! — but it's definitely bettter than nothing. At least you can pack up and go away.

Paying to get your service terminated is frowned upon, but technically not illegal, ie. like phone, water, or power companies demanding that you pay something for them to cancel their service (since they have to remove something out of your home — phone lines, a water metre, whatever). So it's something which is not nice to do, but not exactly illegal.

As to "other companies" who incite their European customers to avoid taxes… well, the boxed version of WoW does indeed pay VAT, although I'm not sure how the billing works for the monthly fee. They certainly address taxation in the US according to the state the customer comes from:

But it requires someone who actually plays WoW to explain how they bill their customers.

In any case, we're not being additionally billed for US taxes (the US does not have VAT; only a few US states have some form of sales tax, and this often doesn't apply to services — only goods — and not always to online commerce, either).

LL, like any other company in the world wishing to sell services in the European market, have no choice but to comply with European Directive 2002/38/EC since July 1, 2003 So, no, it's not like LL just turned evil and got an excellent reason for increasing the prices of their services for half of their residents. In fact, being very sceptical of all sorts of drama and world conspiration theories, it's far more likely that LL's new UK accountants just sat down with Babbage and his crew and asked him: "So, well, how much VAT do you claim from your residents? — Hmm, none? — WHAT? You're crazy?? This is a major tax evasion scheme and highly illegal, let's get your US counterpart to fix this until it's too late and someone at the Revenue Service finds out what you're doing!!" and this got the ball rolling… very quickly!

Now, then comes the moral issue. Is it "right" or "wrong" to spoil 5 million users' enjoyment of SL just to be able to comply with European legislation? The answer is naturally a complex one. Everybody is always complaining that LL does not have an Euro-compliant ToS; that they disregard European legislation on online gambling, but are willing to charge us for VAT; that they should get rid of ageplayers and Nazi insignia because they're forbidden in some European countries. So it's complex — which European legislation should LL follow, and which should they ignore? It's a moral issue in most cases, but a legal one in most cases — ie. LL cannot afford to break too many European laws, but some have more consequences than others.

Then there is the issue of keeping the SL economy sustainable! Actually, I don't believe this will affect LL at all. Sure, they'll lose half their Premium accounts, but LL has long since dropped that as a major source of income — all they want is to host private islands. And what will obviously happen is that European users will not buy any more islands, but instead rent them wholesale from non-EU users. For LL it's the same thing: they'll get the monthly fees from non-EU residents, who will now have a new business opportunity, and if I were them, I'd be aggressively buying now a lot of islands since it's quite likely that another big wave of residents are going to drop tier on the mainland, sell their islands, and come to the tax-free world of private islands owned by non-EU members, where you can pay your tier with L$ without problems.

Oh, and for the record, I don't like it either — there are a lot of things that could and should be made differently by LL, but they're far too stubborn to listen and learn…]]>

Lots of things exist despite their lack of clarity.

RT $650,000 for Scott Walker recall? That's only about $0.10 per Wis resident. Chump-change to save democracy,

can one broker small business loans to banks like a mortgage broker do with home loans?

pcworlds: dellmatonla: what is the penalty charges of punjab national bank on minimum balance maintenence ? commercial bank…

Hi Guys! Visit this website if you're in need of Quality Bookkeeping/ Tax /VAT Services

http://t.co/wiL1qT3U

AIPAC – Treason by Members of the United States Congress – Video 4 http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2012…

Lee Crockett: The Bottom Line: Little Fish, Big Fishery –

27 yrs, Male, 5'9", Hindu, Telugu, Arya Vysya, United States of America –

Hope I never see that lil ghetto mixed chick and her ugly ass nigga. Bitch left $2. That's chump change smh

UNRAR 3.80 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2008 Alexander RoshalExtracting from the united states of america.rarCreating the united states of america OKExtracting the united states of america/01 – the american metaphysical circus.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/02 – hard coming love.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/03 – cloud song.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/04 – the garden of earthly delights.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/05 – i won't leave my wooden wife for you, sugar.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/06 – where is yesterday.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/07 – coming down.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/08 – love song for the dead che.mp3 77%the united states of america/08 – love song for the dead che.mp3 – CRC failedExtracting the united states of america/09 – stranded in time.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/10 – the american way of love.mp3 OK Total errors: 1]]>

UNRAR 3.80 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2008 Alexander RoshalExtracting from the united states of america.rarCreating the united states of america OKExtracting the united states of america/01 – the american metaphysical circus.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/02 – hard coming love.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/03 – cloud song.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/04 – the garden of earthly delights.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/05 – i won't leave my wooden wife for you, sugar.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/06 – where is yesterday.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/07 – coming down.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/08 – love song for the dead che.mp3 77%the united states of america/08 – love song for the dead che.mp3 – CRC failedExtracting the united states of america/09 – stranded in time.mp3 OK Extracting the united states of america/10 – the american way of love.mp3 OK Total errors: 1]]>