VAT - Zero rate for samples - PO and delivery country are both EU but different, does it matter?

Having a mental block on VAT on samples sent to EU

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I am having a mental block, so would welcome your thoughts.

Customer has locations all over Europe that we usually sell to and invoice each country individually for 'normal' products delivered to each location. Any new products developed for the customer are organised centrally with their head office in one country in the EU who raise a Purchase Order (PO) for new production tooling and samples. When samples are approved and normal products are supplied again the POs all come from the destination countries.

My question is this:

The PO for samples comes from the central head office company in the EU which is VAT registered. It si the head office that develops the new product, owns the tooling etc and as such the samples are a key part of this work. But the samples are physically sent to their production locations all over the EU to ensure they fit seamlessly with each production site, all of which are VAT registered in these individual countries as well. Can we accept a central PO and raise invoices zero rated to the central head office company using it's own VAT registration, even though the samples are sent to many locations through Europe? Or should we seek individual POs from each and every location for their own respective samples? Either way, the customer is VAT registered in every location so no VAT will be charged, but its the difference between a hell of a lot of paperwork (and one annoyed customer) and very straight forward paperwork (and a happy customer).

Thanks all.

David.

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