  
| Author: | Rob_and_Shelagh  | | Posted: | Aug 9, 2012 06:23 | | Subject: | Re: Button Solution (Requirements by German Law) | | Viewed: | 65 times | | Topic: | Suggestions | |
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| In Suggestions, franz76906 writes:
| | In Suggestions, Rob_and_Shelagh writes:
| | In Suggestions, franz76906 writes:
| | | | I have a question: In Germany what determines a seller to be "professional" or
not and how is this enforced in law?
Robert
|
Hi Robert,
in Germany (I think quite similar to many other countries) the state wants to
get his part of any income of his citizens.
a) from the view of income tax: One kind of income is 'doing a business'. What's
a 'business' instead of a 'hobby'?
Every kind of 'regular doing' which is 'directed to get a profit'! I know: many
people say: I'm only selling a bit to lower the costs of my hobby, but in fact
they earn profit (= business) to finance their hobby (= private). As especially
the term 'regular' is not defined clearly, the tax office may assume 'professional
business' at least when you have e.g. several feedbacks as a seller at 'the other
side'. Then they may ask how many deals, what kind of deals, what volume etc.
etc.
b) from the view of value added tax (VAT): as soon as you have a turnover of
more than 17.500 Eur you HAVE TO deal incl. VAT - if your sales are lower you
CAN do so.
There are several special regulations such as 'Differenzbesteuerung' which I
don't want to explain...
In General: as soon as a seller is dealing professional, there are many laws
which have to be fulfilled - especially in online-businesses.
Most of them could be solved with store terms and splash pages up to now; but
now we have to add a little more brain and time to get a step further...
HTH
Thomas
(who is no lawyer!...)
|
Thanks Thomas, that is indeed similar to UK. Tax is a separate issue but there
is much legislation already in place across the EU now for consumer protection
such as the Distance Selling Regulations (and running a store that happens to
be in the same trading sector as your hobby of course has no legal significance
whatsoever to that). If we are going to have specific functionality in place
on BL to help sellers keep within the law I think we also should have more guidance-
1. For sellers to help them determine which legislation aplies to them and
2. For buyers to understand their rights and which sellers are obliged to honour
their rights.
eBay does this on a per country basis. BL does not have the resources of eBay
of course but if members such as yourself are co-ordinating things with Admin
for Germany then we could have similar efforts in other countries too. I have
suggested this in the past and I think it is essential for BL to be seen to be
promoting legal trading and doing what it can to help its' members do so. I constantly
come across EU stores that (by any deffinition) would be classed as "professional"
which (either by lack of knowledge or deliberately) sell in complete conflict
with the basic provisions of the DSR and other trading laws and I see this new
one presenting exactly the same issues. Maybe something to discuss with Admin.
Robert
|
Hi Robert,
from my point of view these things are completely in the responsiblity of us
sellers, not Admin. (some of them are a bit 'resistant regarding consulting'
.
All these legal issues might be worked out for each country and can be shared
between the specific sellers in that country. As always - it needs ONE who starts
the group...
(May be there could be additional forum topics especially to inform sellers -
in their mother language.)
I'd like to discuss some kind of user-group with admin to share the knowledge
as well as the load of work. I can think of country specific views with foreign
texts etc. which can be provided from these user-groups so that we don't have
to ask each and everything to be implemented by admin.
Precondition would be a clear architecture and documentation of the system so
that 'we' could fill specific tables etc. ourselves.
But I think we'll have to wait with such discussions until the current bugs have
been repaired.
Rgds
Andreas
|
Hi Andreas, sounds like good thinking to me. I agree, seller is responsible for
doing things properly, BL should do what it can to give him the tools and information
to do so where possible. A lot of people come here to sell, it is easy to set
up a store and just as easy to fall foul of the law through lack of knowledge
(or by decision of course). Equally a good marketplace should provide its' buyers
with information about their rights and what they should expect from sellers
- it all promotes a quality site that people can trust. It was a while ago and
some of it was to address some other issues we had at the time but part of this
is relevent I think:
http://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=592577
I would be willing to contribute to any discussions on this and also would help
maintain any UK data if asked. Of course, as you say I appreciate Admin still
has some short term priorties to fix!
Thanks, Robert
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