UK may raise Intrastat Arrivals threshold to £1.2m
- Aug 22, 2013 | Richard Asquith
At the end of July, the UK VAT office issued a proposal to raise the reporting threshold for Intrastat arrivals from £600,000 to £1,200,000 per annum. The aim of the proposal is to reduce the reporting burden on businesses.
Intrastat captures intra-EU movement of goods
Intrastat is the monthly reporting obligation for VAT registered business to complete. It requires details of all movement of goods across intra-EU borders. ‘Arrivals’ are the movement of goods into the UK from another EU country. Goods coming into or going out of the EU via the UK, imports and exports, are excluded.
Intrastat enables the UK and EU authorities to understand the levels of trade in the European Union, and it was introduced in 1993 with the creation of the EU Single Market. The EU has suggested to its 28 member states that they may look for ways to simplify the reporting burden on their domestic businesses reporting Arrivals. This could include eliminating the requirement altogether in 2016, using information gathered by other states through their Dispatches Intrastat reporting.
Doubling the UK’s reporting level for Arrivals to £1.2m would reduce data capture from 95% to 93%, but release thousands of companies from the compliance requirements.
If approved, the new measure would come into force from January 2014.
