Transferring VW licences from USA to Europe

[Cadplan Architecture]

Has anyone in the UK any experience of purchasing a VW licence from the USA re any import taxation issues?

[Art V]

Within the EU you are not charged tax (VAT)  when buying from an EU country and you are supposed to reverse charge it in your own country's tax submission (and also deduct it at the same time as reimbursable purchase sales tax).
For buying from the US it is basically the same but you may have to fill out an additional form if it is considered to be a goods delivery instead of a service (e.g. DVD delivery). Because of it being a non-EU purchase you might need to fill out an additional form anyway but that contains basically the seller's details (tax/VAT number, name and address and if necessary business registration number) which will be used to exchange the information between the US and UK tax authorities.

Because it is a downloadable software combined with VSS (a service subscription) it is most likely considered to be a service, which simplifies things quite a bit.
So as long as the seller does not charge you taxes you need to both reverse charge and deduct the VAT at UK rate during your regular tax submission (monthly, quarterly or yearly depending on your situation)

I wouldn't worry to much about it, just call your UK tax authority for the finer details just to be sure, but I'd be surprised if it would be very different from what I wrote above. (In the past there were more forms that needed to be filled out, but things have been simplified a few years ago)

The more important question is whether Vectorworks would honour the change of registration in this case, so that would be the first thing to check out.

This link should have most of the info you need:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-702-imports/vat-notice-702-imports

Edited October 14, 2017 by Art V
Added link for UK tax info on importing goods/services