News

VAT fraud: Amazon locks accounts of Chinese dealers

/
Date14 Jun 2018
/
Posted By
/
Categories

Amazon seems to be taking this serious and is said to have blocked hundreds of merchant accounts in its online marketplace. The affected entrepreneurs are said to have come from China and have cheated on the local sales tax.

The fraud with the sales tax costs the German state every year a lot of money. In addition, it comes naturally also that by such frauds the market conditions in the oscillation come: If some dealers pay the sales tax compliant and others do not, an imbalance arises, which is at the expense of reputable providers, since their financial burden is much higher.

Particularly large is the problem with the sales tax fraud, among other things on the online marketplace of Amazon be on the thousands of Chinese dealers peddling their goods, but not just pay sales tax. The criticism is not new. But even though concrete measures have already been discussed in politics, there has been little opposition up to now. Until now.

Because now Amazon seems to have become active: As the Süddeutsche reports, the group is said to have blocked hundreds of Chinese merchant accounts, which are suspected of having not paid appropriate taxes.

Amazon: tax office Berlin-Neukölln involved in closing

The closure of the corresponding accounts was done under the action of the tax office Berlin-Neukölln, in which all Chinese traders who want to sell their goods in the German market and thus also on the Amazon Marketplace have to register. “According to research by WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung led so-called requests for information of the Berlin tax investigation to the fact that Amazon excluded more than 500 suspicious traders from China from shops on Amazon Marketplace,” reports the South Germans.

The merchants’ merchandise was initially quarantined, leaving providers with no access to their goods stored in Amazon’s logistics and distribution centres.

Tax fraud on Amazon: The situation remains serious

According to Süddeutsche, the number of Chinese traders who registered in Berlin-Neukölln has “more than doubled since May 2017” , their number is currently abundant at 1900. Nevertheless, it must probably be assumed that the dark figure or the number of undiscovered black sheep will be in the thousands and that much of the work is still in front of those responsible.

“In order to detect further tax evaders, the investigators systematically evaluate the Amazon website and pelt the company with requests for information. Only these requests force Amazon to take the problem seriously”, it continues.

The fact that Amazon is slowly but surely willing to intervene might also be due to the fact that the time for the online giant (and its competitors) expires. As we have already reported here, the policy wants the online marketplaces in the future namely massively more to take the obligation: Specifically, this means that Amazon and Co. from 2019 are liable for non-paying traders.

Quelle: Tina Plewinski, onlinehaendler-news.de