Posted
As it looks, Britain will exit the European Union on October 31, with or without a deal. There is currently no way to foresee the implications this will have on VAT handling and legal regulations in general, except that it will no longer work the way it does now.
We received a message from UK tax authorities a while ago, which somehow had a subtle threatening subtext, that we will be required to register a business in the UK or stop dealing with UK citizens altogether. At first I thought this was a scam. These are truly exceptional times.
Whatever will come of it, it is likely there will be a transition period after October 31 during which we will not be able to sell licenses or upgrades to users in the UK. This is just to let you know in advance that we are doing our best to avoid any interruptions. However, if registering a business in the UK is part of the "no deal", this might take a little time.
Thu, 2020-01-30 - 17:58 Permalink
Tomorrow is the day ... but most things will remain as usual for now, until end of 2020. That's good news, as Cognitone won't have to adapt to whatever UK officials might come up with in the short term.
If you want to get an idea of the chaos and sweeping changes this undoing of a decades long entanglement with the EU entails, subscribe to this government update service for a while (bottom of page):
(https://www.gov.uk/transition)
It will blow you away. I'm getting updates on an hourly basis, sometimes a dozen within minutes. Literally all aspects of life, business and private, will be disrupted, upended and thrown into legal uncertainty for years to come. From what I glanced so far, there's some stripping of consumer protections from UK citizens going on. This is probably not what they tell you in the evening news.