The United Kingdom on its own

Amazon's UK marketplace sits next to the European ones in the seller interface, which makes it look like another country you can switch on. It is not. The United Kingdom is outside the European Union's VAT system and customs union, so none of the machinery from lessons 4 and 6 reaches it: the One Stop Shop does not cover it, an EU VAT number does not work there, and goods crossing between the two are imports in both directions.

There is no threshold for you

UK businesses register for VAT when their taxable turnover over the last twelve months goes over £90,000.¹ That figure gets quoted constantly, and it is not yours. HMRC also requires registration regardless of taxable turnover where the business is based outside the UK and supplies any goods or services to the UK, or expects to within the next thirty days.¹

Read that twice if you are running a U.S. company. For an overseas seller, the practical threshold is zero. The £90,000 number is a trap only because it is the first number everyone finds.

Who accounts for the VAT

This is the part that confuses sellers who come from the U.S. course, because the answer is often “not you”, and yet you still have obligations.

HMRC's rule is that online marketplaces are liable for the VAT on goods of any value that are located in the UK at the point of sale and sold by an overseas business through an online marketplace.² In plain terms: your stock is in a UK warehouse, you are an overseas company, so Amazon accounts for the VAT on that sale rather than you. You still need the registration, you still file returns, and those sales appear in them — but the money does not pass through your account the way it does in the European Union.

The other case is goods sent to a UK customer from outside the country. For consignments valued at £135 or less sold through an online marketplace, the marketplace charges and accounts for the VAT at the point of sale, with an exception for business-to-business sales where the customer has supplied a UK VAT registration number.² Selling directly rather than through a marketplace, the seller must charge and account for VAT at the point of sale, subject to the same business-to-business exception.³ Above £135, normal VAT and customs rules apply on importation.³

The customs border

Moving goods between Great Britain and any other country, the European Union included, requires an EORI number.⁴ If you are not established in the UK and are not eligible to apply for one yourself, you appoint someone to deal with customs on your behalf.⁴ In practice that is a customs agent or a freight forwarder, and it is a relationship worth having in place before your first shipment rather than during it.

The consequence people underestimate is stock planning. European inventory does not serve UK orders and UK inventory does not serve European ones; each crossing is an import with paperwork, duty and time. Two markets, two stock pools, two forecasts.

Product marking

The United Kingdom operates the UKCA marking, and it has also kept recognising the European one: where the aims and requirements of product regulations meet the needs of the UK, the UK continues to recognise the CE marking, alongside or in place of the UKCA marking, for the Great Britain market, under the Product Safety and Metrology (Amendment) Regulations 2024.⁵ The regimes span over twenty product types.⁵

There is one date worth writing down: legislation currently in force allows the UKCA marking to be placed on a label affixed to the product, or on a document accompanying the product, until 11pm on 31 December 2027, with sector exceptions.⁵ After that it goes on the product itself. If you are commissioning packaging or tooling now for goods that need UKCA, that date belongs in the brief.

Northern Ireland is its own arrangement and is not covered here. If your goods go there, ask an adviser rather than assuming the Great Britain answer applies.

Deciding whether to do it at all

The UK is a large, English-speaking market with no translation problem, which makes it the most tempting expansion on the list and the one people start before they are ready. The honest test is the one from lesson 7: the cost of a second registration, a second accountant, a second stock pool and a customs relationship is annual and fixed, and it has to be covered by the margin on volume you can actually forecast. If the European course has taught one thing, it is that a market you enable and then neglect still files returns.

Mistakes

• Believing the £90,000 threshold applies to you. For a business based outside the UK supplying goods to the UK, it does not.
• Assuming no registration is needed because the marketplace accounts for the VAT. Those are two different questions.
• Treating the UK as part of a European plan. It is outside the EU VAT system and the customs union.
• Planning one stock pool for both sides of the border.
• Arranging customs during the first shipment instead of before it.
• Ignoring the December 2027 UKCA labelling date while ordering packaging and tooling today.
• Assuming Northern Ireland follows the same rules. It does not.

Next

The final lesson collects the mistakes that end European accounts rather than merely costing money: the ones involving storage settings, unregistered countries, compliance gaps and paperwork that arrives too late.