Micro-sellers roasting on a gov'ment whim,
VAT nibbling at your costs,
Yuletide tax being slapped on to skim
Tiny profit, all is lost,
It's a profit frost that doesn't help the little man
Make the season bright of yore,
Puny sales not worth much, down the pan,
Won't find it hard to close the store.
We know it started in '08,
Before the digi world was fixed in any state
To understand just how the internet
Would let the little guys soar like a jet.
Ravelry's offering a simple fix,
To help those suff'ring this snafu,
And with Loveknitting, all the boxes have ticks,
To bring patterns to the EU...
All parodies aside, it may have escaped your notice that the UK/EU in their desire to crack down on those big companies who are avoiding paying taxes in the UK (there's usually at least one story a week in the British tabloids about some massive company or other's UK tax dodge) has issued new tax laws that come in to force, oh, yesterday, to try and get them to cough up.
Why is that a subject of YOUR blog post, Red?, I hear you ask... well... It appears that all this new VAT tax shall probably achieve is the shutting down of many, many micro digital businesses... It's a long, convoluted story on a subject that I must admit to not completely understanding enough to be able to wax lyrical, so I shall take Ravely's own code monkey, Casey's explanation:
On January 1st, 2015, a complex set of tax changes goes into effect in the European Union. Sellers of pattern PDFs now have to pay tax to European Union member countries when a pattern buyer resides in that country. [For more information and resources, see http://euvataction.org/]
You can imagine the amount of pain this will cause to micro businesses and hobby designers, and I understand that there are not just a few of which have chosen (keeping to my specialist area, knitting) to stop selling their patterns completely, or offer them all for free.
As a band-aid, Ravelry and Loveknitting (a yarny shop website that sells all things knitting and crochet) have teamed together to offer EU designers a way to keep selling their patterns but without the headache of working out the VAT for each different country in which the purchaser resides. (Oh yes, it is that complicated!)
What do you need to do? Absolutely nothing. You can buy patterns as normal, through Ravelry, through my links, and now, also through Loveknitting. Depending on your location, you will either be directed to pay through the Ravelry platform, or the Loveknitting platform. (They also Lovecrochet, too!) But thanks to this new VAT, prices will change, albeit only by pennies/cents, and each country will have a separate rate. You cannot BEGIN to imagine how thankful I am for this collaboration between Loveknitting and Ravelry.
We've been given a 6 months fees-free chance to keep selling our patterns, which is marvellous. IF this mess hasn't been cleaned-up after 6 months, then LK will begin to charge us 20% commission on every pattern it sells. I hope you understand that I will have to match this commission in my prices if that day comes... I hope not!
So, really, thanks for reading, thanks for buying, and thanks for knitting my patterns! I would have been devastated to have to pull my patterns, and stop designing, so I think for now I'm just going to continue to be grateful for small mercies!
Merry New 2015!
(And because I can't leave this post without a little knitting pr0n, here's a little hint of something that should be getting released into the wild in a week!) ;)
All text ⓒNW
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