Henry Hyde: Designer, Writer, Podcaster

New VAT Rules Affect All Digital Businesses

New VAT Rules Affect All Digital Businesses

Not a very positive update, I’m afraid, but important news nonetheless.

On January 1st 2015, the EU is introducing a change in VAT rules that will affect the sale of all digital goods and services, including PDFs, ebooks, music downloads, photo libraries, online courses and so on. The changes will also include draconian data collection and administration burdens that are simply insupportable for a one-man-band micro-business such as mine. I have consulted with others and have been wracking my brain to find a practical work-around, but as things stand, the new rules mean I have had to abandon plans to sell digital products from this site in 2015.

Consequently, I shall be selling all my digital offerings from either Wargame Vault (for my wargame products), or larger works from well-known outlets like Amazon, Audible, Smashwords the iTunes store or other portal outlets for my planned fiction, non-fiction, audio and training products. I shall post links here in due course before the end of the year. My wargame books will continue to be sold and distributed by Pen & Sword via the usual channels.

Naturally, this means a significant cut in planned income, as portal sites like WV and Amazon quite naturally take a cut of the cover price. Decisions about the pricing of any new products will be made in due course.

Thank you for all the support you have shown me for so many years, and I hope you understand that this change has been forced upon me – and tens of thousands of other micro-businesses – by powers completely beyond our control.

If you would like to read more about the VAT changes, then look here. And if you would like to kick up a fuss about this ludicrous situation along with the rest of us, there’s an online petition here.

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