EC Sales Lists

Sage 50 EC Sales List changes 2010

There are several changes to the EC Sales list for January 2010, this guide covers some of the details

*** Please note this is not qualified tax advice, please check with a qualified accountant or the tax office ***

At the time of writing Sage 50 is not compliant with the new legislation and patches will be release late December 2009 for the changes in January 2010.

The EC Sales list is a way of reporting on transactions between different member states.  It is a summary of all the transactions between you and each other VAT registration number you have dealt with.

Historically this has only applied to companies supplying goods but as of Jan 2010 this will also apply to services.

In Sage 50 you can configure tax code (Tcodes) to be used for the different types of transactions. Settings>Configuration>Tax Codes>Select one>Edit 

The help file contains a lot of useful information and background, it is not so obviously indexed, search in the index for "ECSL" and you will find it.

The transactions are assigned to a tax code, that tax code is also linked to EC Sales, Purchases and reverse charges and so different codes make up the value of different boxes on the vat return.  In addition the transactions go on the EC sales list and reverse charge sales list based on the options associated with those codes. 

In V2010 Sage introduced the additional option of not just goods but also services.

B2B EC Goods Transactions

If you sell goods to another VAT registered business in the EC you do not have to charge VAT, however, you have to include the customers VAT registration number on the invoice, you have to include the Sales in your EC Sales list summary (subject to turnover limits) and you need to accounts for the turnover on your VAT return in box 8

In Sage by default the turnover of transactions with tax code T4 is put in box 8

B2B EC Service Transactions

Until now if you sold a service to someone in the EC the place of supply was generally the UK so you accounted for it on your UK VAT return in box 8 just as for a sales of goods.  However, you did not need to account for it on your EC Sales list.

However, under the new rules, the place of supply will be the country in which the customer is.

This means it is now outside the scope of UK VAT (In sage a tax code T9) would be appropriate, however, it now has to go on the EC Sales list.

The simple solution is to Change Tax code T22 to be on the Sales list and outside the scope of VAT and we believe that this is what Sage will be doing with their patch, however, we will not know for sure until it is released.

In summary, the two changes combined will in general mean that EC service sales, will no longer go on the VAT return but will go on the EC sales list.  This is the opposite of what happened before.

It is also worth noting that if you exceed the VAT threshold in another member state then you will need to register in that member state and submit VAT returns to that member state as well as the UK.