VAT on Afternic sales

[AlistairH]

Just wondering how VAT is treated on selling through platforms such as Afternic?

There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice out there on how this is treated and even my accountant is finding it difficult to know for certain one way or another.

The crux of this issue is whether the platform you are selling on (in this case Afternic) is treated as your customer or whether the end user is treated as your customer.

If it is Afternic then I understand it is outwith the scope of VAT as they are US based but if it's the buyer of the domain then that becomes really difficult becasue you never know anything of their identity, not even a contact email. Which in theory leans towards Afternic are considered your customer at that point as they take payment from the buyer and send it to you minus commission, they deal with the transfer and they set the terms to the buyer, so surely you can't charge VAT on a sale if you don't even know anything about the domain buyer (and vice versa).

Your thoughts are much appreciated!

 

[DJ]

You have no idea who the customer is or where they are based, so I would suggest they can't be your customer unless you are doing self-brokerage or refer the sale to them.

 

[astutiumRob]

Afternic are your 'customer' in their standandard sale method
- so it's a sale to a US Corp for VAT purposes.

 

[AlistairH]

Thanks DJ / Rob, That's what I was steering towards but Afternic don't make it easy by not providing any info around VAT. My accountant also found this today on Croner Intelligence answering this very question more or less which seems to prove this:

"Where digital services are supplied to consumers through an online marketplace or digital platform, the platform operator is deemed to be supplying the consumer (even if the underlying supplier is identified) if it sets the general terms and conditions, authorises payment, or handles delivery or download of the digital service"."

And apparantly these sales should not even count towards the VAT threshold:

"Supplies only contribute to the UK VAT registration threshold if they are taxable supplies whose place of supply is the UK. As the place of supply of many overseas B2B sales is outside the UK, they do not contribute to the registration threshold because they are outside the scope of VAT. [9] Your client's domain-selling income, being outside the scope of UK VAT on the above analysis, would therefore not count towards the registration threshold (currently £90,000 for 2026/27)"