VAT Clarification and Extension

Check out the Blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/04/vat-are-you-talking-about/#comment-491339

LL provides a much better explanation and extends the date VAT begins to Oct. 27.

I'm not European but I applaud them.

They couldn't find you on that island anyway.

But is it a European Island?

That is a good post, but it would be nice if they'd done something like that BEFORE they implemented VAT. They always seem to be backtracking their decisions.

Oh FFS days of whingeing about LL not giving me notice. Sending a support ticket asking why they're back charging me VAT from before September 27th and the gits go and do the decent thing and provide notice!

They have thrown the issue regarding L$ transactions wide open admittedly but there's a town hall on Monday which should be fun.

its still bollocks for European players however neatly you wrap it up

I don't know if it's European or not, but shhhhh. If I'm going to be stuck here I might as well have one benefit.

I agree it should have been done before. They don't seem to learn from THAT mistake. All I can do is applaud them for stepping up and doing the right thing now.

Is this not a good thing?

Well I'm happier that's for sure.

That was the worst part of it. charging people before they could do anything about it.


The other part about the built in price doesn't function any differently its just packaging. Although hopefully they label it very clearly so no Europeans get confused.

Listens for the sound of One Hand clapping.

"get down on the floor, I'm going to shoot you in the head"

"oh no"

"well ok, I'll just shoot you in the foot then"

"I'm happier with that"

So am I!

Yeah that was my chief complaint. Obviously I'm not happy about being charged more from next month but that's not the fault of LL. Customer service wise this is about all I could hope they'd do when this situation was forced upon them and for that I'm grateful.

.

Well the tax still needs to be paid - at least until the EU countries change their laws.

I assume they will at some point if web-hosting in other countries who don't charge VAT keeps hurting European companies.

I think the eventual real reason for the Brighton Office is LL eventually has plans to put in European servers to improve performance. They had said some things to this effect that they were working on the technical problems associated with it.

And as Ciaran correctly points out, if you're being shot anywhere, its your government doing it at this point, not LL.

Kudos to LL for providing the 30 day notice, albeit in an extremely clumsy, after the fact PR-negative manner.

Well I don't think so. The law actually *helps* European providers by requiring non-Europeans to pay VAT, supposedly placing them on an equal footing with ED based providers. In the case of SL, because there isn't any European SL provider, it doesn't work that way, and of course the consumers get hurt because they are paying VAT, but they get hurt by the tax either way it seems.

Well I meant web hosting in a larger sense. Most Web Hosting services don't pay the EU VAT if they aren't located in the EU , even if they are somehow supposed to.

Since its easy to have your website in a different country than you are - this puts European Web-hosting companies at a disadvantage.

Oh I agree with that. I don't think the EU will change its laws, but good luck to Brussels enforcing them against web hosting providers outside the EU.

Oh wait!! Maybe they can sue the US in the UN?!? *rolls eyes*

And send the Blue Helmets in to Collect?

It will hurt them in the future - the web isn't going to get smaller.

An exception should be made for industries trying to compete on the global market place with other companies that can not be made to pay VAT.

If that ever came to happen it would be crazy. Any country could set any tax at all and send the UN to collect.

Nowhereeverexistastan could say all phone calls to their country must be taxed at a 1000$ a minute rate.

Then they can lobby the UN to collect.

Actually they can pay New York City all their diplomatic parking tickets and call it even.

You know that this is all part of the LL plan. I think they like to watch people get all upset and then smooth it over. It also works by keeping people away until they can get the back end up running. They know what they are doing with every move they make. It is all a big game to them.

What (neutral) nations do you think would take on such a task?

Andorra, Lichtenstein, and Micronesia.