A big seller was caught and fined 38.29 million! Sellers must be vigilant...

In addition to dealing with the ever-changing rules of the platform, you also have to deal with different policies in different countries. If you are not careful, even a billionaire with annual sales may still fail!

Recently, Guangdong Xinghui Precision Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a cross-border giant, issued an "Announcement on the Tax Payment Notice Received by the Second-level Subsidiary from the French Directorate-General of Public Finance".

Sunvalley (HK) Limited (hereinafter referred to as Sunvalley Hong Kong), a second-level subsidiary of Guangdong Xinghui Precision Manufacturing Co., Ltd., received a tax payment notice issued by the Directorate-General of Public Finance of France on November 30, 2020, with a total fee of 38.29 million yuan.

The French tax authorities determined that Sun Valley Hong Kong had not fully declared VAT from January 2015 to August 2019, and therefore issued a tax payment notice to Sun Valley Hong Kong, totaling 4,950,891 euros, equivalent to RMB 38.29 million. The fee accounted for 2.02% of the company's latest audited net assets and 25.78% of the company's audited net profit in 2019.

According to Xinghui Precision, the company currently has sufficient funds to pay taxes after the final amount is determined by the local tax authorities in France, and it will not cause significant adverse effects on daily production and operation activities.

Currently, Xinghui Precision is sorting out and conducting self-inspections on the tax declarations of its French stores, and verifying them with the VAT taxes listed by the French Directorate-General of Public Finance.

Due to objections to the amount of the fine, Xinghui Precision officially hired a local third-party professional organization in France in January 2021 to apply to the local tax department for VAT taxes and fine reductions, and will pay the final payment amount in a timely manner after it is determined.

Since 2020, Europe has been slowly tightening its VAT policy, and many sellers have also accelerated their pace of compliance. Sellers must take this matter seriously to avoid unnecessary losses in the future.

As mentioned in the opening article, cross-border sellers have always had to face the dual constraints of the country of sale and the platform. Especially for the platform, various small rules may change every 3 days or 5 days.

Amazon Europe issued an announcement: From March 31, consumable products on the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain sites that do not meet the new "unit weight attribute" requirements will be removed from searches.

The new rules will apply to the following categories of goods sold on Amazon Europe: baby, groceries, health and personal care beauty, pets, wine and cleaning supplies. These categories will need to fill in the unit_count attribute, including the value (such as "5") and the unit type (such as "ounces", "grams", "units", etc.).

For new products in these categories, sellers must fill in these fields when creating a listing. For existing products, sellers can submit or update unit_count values ​​through the listing template or by visiting the listing management page.

Sellers can learn more about which of your ASINs will be affected by this change on the Amazon Listing Quality dashboard, or go to the Listing Quality page from the Manage Inventory page in Seller Central.

In the future, Amazon's operations are destined to be more refined, and sellers should pay special attention to some small details!