24 December 2014

Have a Good One!




Wishing you a very merry festive season!

I hope you have a lovely few days planned - what are you up to? I'm looking forward to snuggling into my glow-in-the-dark PJs with a glass of sherry, eating my body weight in cave-aged Gruyère and watching Edward Scissorhands. I've got a sweatshirt Coco dress cut out and ready to sew, and might finally get around to starting my second ever knitting project.

We're going to be taking a break from processing orders from the shop until Monday 5th January. You can still order stuff during this time, but physical orders won't get posted until 5th Jan, and we won't be answering emails until then either. Digital patterns won't be affected - they will be emailed to you automatically as usual.

Speaking of digital patterns, you may have heard something about VAT MOSS (or #VATMESS) and the resulting impact on sewing pattern businesses and the choice that you have as a customer. Basically there is some new EU legislation coming in on 1st January 2015 which means that anyone - in any country - who sells a digital product by automatic download to a non-business customer in the European Union will now have to pay VAT at the customer's rate, rather than the seller's rate. This affects sellers of digital products all over the world, not just in the EU. The result is quite a bit of extra work for businesses in terms of VAT registration either in every single EU country they sell to or to the simpler MOSS scheme, as well as filing quarterly VAT returns and reporting on customer data.

Why am I telling you about some boring tax issue? Because, sadly, some small businesses have decided to stop selling digital products - including PDF sewing patterns - because they find the work load and accounting costs too burdensome. I totally empathise with them, and quite frankly I'm gutted that this legislation is going to have such an adverse impact on digital entrepreneurship and the growing choice we have come to appreciate in the craft community. Hopefully in time there will be some solutions in place to help reduce the logistical and financial burden of this legislation on small businesses, who, ironically, the decision was supposed to help... Okay, this was supposed to be a lighthearted Christmas post and has now become a long rant about tax legislation (sorry!), so I'll stop in a sec, but I wanted to let you know that I am all set up for VAT MOSS and will continue to offer digital sewing patterns in my shop in the new year, since we know that many of you love having this option.

Phew.

I don't know about you, but my brain needs a rest for a few days. Be back soon. Have a good one!