Getting Ready for Brexit

We now know that the Government has said that the UK will be leaving the EU on 31 October whatever the circumstances with Brexit.

HMRC have issued further guidance for companies who import and export goods between the UK and the EU.

Leaving the EU without a deal means there will be immediate changes to the way UK businesses trade with the EU that may impact your business.

• UK businesses will have to apply customs, excise and VAT processes to goods sold into the EU (these are the same rules that already apply for goods and services traded outside of the EU).
• Trading partners in the EU will have to apply customs, excise and VAT processes to trade they carry out with you, in the same way, that they do for goods and services traded from outside of the EU.

As part of the controls at customs, you will be asked for an Economic Operator Registration Identification number, EORI.

The EORI should be a twelve-digit number beginning with ‘GB’.

HMRC has started to automatically issue VAT registered businesses with a UK EORI. They have written to more than 88,000 VAT registered companies to let them know the UK EORI number they’ve been assigned.

Businesses will not be able to move goods in and out of the UK without one.

If your business is not VAT registered, you will still need to apply for a UK EORI number now. HMRC cannot give you this automatically.

Here is a link to the guidance HMRC have issued: https://www.gov.uk/eori