UK Revenue and Customs: Low Risk from e-Commerce

摘要

The United Kingdom's National Audit Office supports the conclusion reached by HM Revenue and Customs' assessment that the overall risk to VAT revenue from online shopping, or e-Commerce, is currently low. The Department has been alert to specific areas of risk which have emerged and is well-positioned to tackle these. As activity increases in this fast changing environment, it will be important that the Department keeps abreast of possible changes in the patterns and levels of risk to VAT. In 2005 some 22 million Britons shopped online buying everything from CDs to electrical goods, food and holidays. Sales over the Internet trebled to £18.1 billion (approximately $33 billion) in the period 2002 to 2004 with a further surge around Christmas 2005. Around 2 per cent of sales were for digitized products such as computer software and music which customers downloaded instantaneously. The Department collected over nearly $1 billion in VAT in 2005-06 on e-Commerce goods and services. The proportion of VAT collected by the Department from e-Commerce transactions is likely to grow substantially with sales expected to hit nearly £60 billion (approximately $109 billion) a year by April 2010.