Heres another unfortunate case of life made difficult for the wee man. From 1st January 2015, new regulations will come into place where VAT on digital products sold in the EU will be chargeable in the place of purchase rather than the place of supply. Although the purpose of the new regulations is to curb large corporations such as Amazon, Apple etc. diverting sales through countries with low VAT rates, such as Luxembourg, the knock-on effect means that many thousands of small businesses and sole traders are also subject to the same regulations. That includes Holy Smokes. These regulations mean that any digital download sold via Holy Smokes Bandcamp store will require VAT adding for customers within the EU and traders will then be required by law to pay the added VAT back to the country of source. This would mean registering for VAT via the MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop) which will involve a great deal of paperwork. These regulations would also mean that for every digital download sold, Holy Smokes would be required to keep the billing address of the customer, the IP address of the device used, the location of the bank, the country code of SIM used by the customer and the location of the customer’s fixed land line through which the service is supplied to them and keep the data for 10 years. As this is a huge undertaking for a record label which is run by one person, Holy Smokes cant currently conform to these regulations. So with this in mind, from 1st January 2015 Holy Smokes will no longer be selling digital downloads direct via the Bandcamp store. Please note that sales of physical releases (including the complimentary FREE digital download included with such sales) will be unaffected. You can still purchase Holy Smokes releases via bigger digital distributors who take care of VAT payments for us such as iTunes. However this unfortunately means less money goes to the label, and more importantly, to the artists. Meanwhile, Bandcamp have stated that “sometime” in 2015 they will handle VAT payments themselves, so when further clarity from Bandcamp is supplied, the situation will be reassessed. With this grim news in mind, should you wish to obtain a digital version of any of the Holy Smokes catalogue via the Bandcamp store, you have until the 31st December to do so. Please continue to support independent record labels and businesses. Well keep fighting the good fight. Chris
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:10:53 +0000
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