We are a group of small business owners located in the EU. We all sell digital products around the world or work with people who do. Just like you, we are concerned about the new laws taking effect from the 1st of Jan 2015 and just like you, we only found out about them by accident.
Nine female business owners joined forces on Facebook to try and wake up the small business community to the impending EU VAT changes. At first we were horrified, then we were outraged, then we became focused. Our first task was to launch the petition on Change.org targeting the UK Government (since that’s where we are located). Then we launched a Twitterstorm which attracted 20,000 tweets using the #VATMOSS hashtag in a couple of hours.
Suddenly, the world woke up to our cause and we found ourselves on social media surrounded by people who were panicking about needing to stop selling to Europe, or stop selling their digital products altogether, or even having to close their business for good.
The mainstream media picked up on what we and the thousands of other business owners around us were doing and our cause was featured in the Guardian, the Telegraph, the FT, the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail, amongst many others. Following all this media attention, the UK tax authorities quickly realised that they’d missed an entire business demographic during their consultations and quickly scrambled together a Twitter Q&A session to engage with us. This session was attended by business owners from all around the world trying to ask the UK tax authorities how this would affect their business.
Here in the UK, the tax authorities have now started to change the way they are implementing the law for small business owners or sole traders thanks to the noise made by thousands of business owners worried about the new legislation. However, this is not enough and it doesn’t protect the millions of people – both businesses and consumers – who will be affected by these laws all around the world.
That’s why we are here. The EU VAT Action Team is a focal point for everyone who is concerned about the changes in global tax for digital business. We are here to give the worldwide digital small business community a very loud voice and we are here to show the EU (and global) tax authorities that we are not willingly going to accept these new changes.
We hope you join us. Please start by signing the petition.
Then join us in our campaign group. You are not alone! Get answers to your questions and help to inspire others to action.
Contact EU VAT Action:
Email: euvat @ clarejosa.com
Media & Politician Enquiries only : (UK +44) 1342 477057
The EU VAT Action Team
Clare Josa
Isabel Zinaburg
Juliet E. McKenna
Lorraine Dallmeier
Megan Kerr
Rosie Slosek