Bought a domain at godaddy auctions and they want me to pay VAT
 

I just bought a domain at godaddy auctions for $1250 and they want me to pay $250 VAT. This is crazy, I am EU citizen buying from US company (owner of domain) through another US company (godaddy).

WTF should I pay VAT for? I bought a lot of times from Sedo (German company!) and never paid VAT on domains.

they want your $

This is their company info as published on auctions.godaddy.com

14455 N. Hayden Rd.
Suite 219
Scottsdale, AZ 85260

they are an US company charging a tax that does not exist in US to their users.

Get someone from the US to buy it for you, and save yourself $250... :2 cents:

Godaddy will try to squeeze every last money drop out of you wherever they can. Didn't you already notice during the domain registration process?

Not unusual to charge a sales tax to people making online purchases. Isn't VAT your sales tax?

It's all about where you the customer are located. If you are in the EU then you should be charged VAT regardless of where the company is.

Non EU companies are meant to register in the EU for VAT if they do business there, clearly lots don't but that's another issue. Certainly more and more big ones are.

Companies in the EU have to register in the country they reside in, but non EU companies also have to register in the EU to pay VAT charged to EU customers - the one benefit they have is that they get to in effect choose which country they register in so tend to pick the lower rated ones, but in general VAT is between 15 and 25%.

So much for no taxation without representation. :(

Every day the internet becomes more and more part of the real world.

Please don't blame me for any of this, I also have never had the chance to vote on anything related to EU law.

SimonScans is completely correct on this.

GoDaddy has a EU VAT number which you will see on your invoice (starts with EUxxxx)

You don't have to pay VAT at GoDaddy auctions if you provide a valid European VAT number during checkout, choose option Business.

yes, exactly. provide a Vat ID and the Tax goes away. GoDaddy just does what is correct unlike other companies who owe 50 million USD in unpaid VAT now.

and if you have no Vat ID you will get the $250 back when you claim taxes for your business.

the only problem is when you so far avoided paying tax for your business - but this would be clearly your problem and not a Godaddy problem

why don't I need to pay VAT when I buy a domain at SEDO auction? They are European company!

Well, he won't get them BACK, but he can claim the $250 as an expense so he gets a taxdeduction for it. Not quite the same :)

Read the thread.
Apparently they are not yet fully playing by the rules or they picked a different Euro country as someone mentioned above for vat purposes.

so us porn companies are supposed to charge vat on european sales?

hey when I was in UK they wanted me to pay VAT I changed my address on the whois and account to US and currency to $ and got round it

so you are saying I should change my godaddy account address to some address I don't live in and risk my 2 dedicated servers and 70 domains I have there? I would rather not. But one thing is for sure, they are the only US company to ever charge me VAT so I will not pay it.

Yes. Bush signed up to it.

The European Union were supposed to be going after a lot of companies this year but I haven't really heard of individual cases yet.

There was a story on here about AFF or the parent company or someone connected with AFF being hit with it. Can't remember the details.

Correct, it's a consumer tax, it's to be charged from consumers and not from companies, that is why a US company is required to charge it and pay it on behalf of the consumer if they wish to do business in the European union. Avoiding to collect and pay it just means that they automatically assume the VAT is included in the sales price and you are trying to steal the money from the government and that it was collected from the customer :Oh crap

The good news is that with our PHONE and SMS billing system the VAT is automatically CHARGED and PAID on your behalf so you do not need to worry about this :thumbsup

well I'm not throwing $250 down the drain. I have written again to godaddy to see what they can do. If they can't do anything I'll try to move this to my friends account. He lives outside EU. But I can already see this will be a huge problem with godaddy.

:1orglaugh

WTF why is tax so much, isn't that like 20%?

I doubt that will work unless you pay for the domain with your friends credit card.

welcome to europe

the question is: are you paying for goods or a service...?

I am paying for an aftermarket domain. I have bought plenty at sedo, from private sellers through escrow.com, PLENTY through snapnames.com and have never been charged VAT. Why at godaddy than?

They're probably supposed to per some of the earlier posts in this thread because you're in the EU, assuming VAT is assessed for purchase of domains (which CA sales tax for instance doesn't seem to be).

Then again, they are also the company with a subscription based paid parking service, so who knows...they love to glean as much money off of n00bs as they can get.

thats not correct, VAT is a consumer tax and does not affect business to business transactions. as a business i have to charge VAT to consumers which i have to transfer to the government. and if i as a business have to pay VAT somewhere i can claim this money from the government. we do this every 3 months.

:2 cents:

If you're in the EU and not registered for sales tax, then what are you registered as?
If you have a business it's a 100% tax write back against income.