Steve Browning

No problem and other people have also contributed. It's all going to be difficult to begin with. Carrier business have had little practical guidance and HMRC are nowhere near ready. It's going to be very messy. The biggest difference will be in second hand stuff. That is now subject to VAT where it wasn't before. New gear from businesses will cost more but not necessarily a huge amount.

It's still fraud. No other word for it.

No business will agree to that, it's fraud.

My reading is that GB exports to NI and vice versa. Guidance was issued just yesterday. Check the buying from EU sellers thread. The last few posts address this.

Not sure how many music shops operate the scheme.

There are a number of margin schemes for different businesses, from antiques to holidays. The everyday evidence of this is when you buy a car and trade in your old one. There is specific wording on the invoice. Gareth beat me to it!

They come with a padded gig bag. There is a footswitch that will handle the channel switching if you want to do it on the fly. There wasn't a 2x15 when I got my cabs but they're a great pair.

The table of cab impedances and amp settings is particularly welcome I expect.

...; and so it begins.

UIK businesses with significant EU activity are going to be seriously affected for some considerable time, it's a plain and simple fact. The company I work for is a multi-national (but UK based) we will be pretty much cutting the UK adrift and maintaining an EU subsidiary to deal with any EU trade (of which there is €millions). We already have subsidiaries in a number of EU countries but I have nothing but sympathy for your friend. Our head of logistics has just tested positive for covid, too, just to add spice to the mix!!

I sit corrected.

For Thomann maybe (and at the moment). Not every site is the same. No need to be quite so aggressive about it. Actually, Thomann won't maintain their UK registration as it's a result of distance selling and that only affects the EU. Shall I underline that?

Plucked out of the air to give a comparison, hence it was the same in both examples. Import VAT is charged on the delivery cost too.

That is distance selling. It is an EU thing so Thomann will no longer have a UK registration (eventually).

Yes. I suspect there are some corpses revolving at a much faster rate and a good few have slowed down!! 🙂

Buying from Thomann, from the UK will result in a VAT free sale from Thomann. Your bill from HMRC (before they release your goods to you) is 20% UK VAT on the combined cost of the goods plus any shipping charge. There will be a small additional charge for providing this facility. Let's take an example - a £300 bass (net of any VAT). £300 + £25 delivery = £325 + £65 VAT plus £10 (at a guess) for using the facility. Your £300 bass is now £400 Before Brexit you would have paid £300 + £60 (UK VAT) + £25 delivery = £385.

I read this to mean that NI buyers will be charged 20% UK VAT. The second sentence suggests it works in reverse too. I believe (note the believe) that the minimising business impacts refers to a VAT registered business being able to use postponed accounting (charging the VAT themselves and claiming it back). Private individuals do not have this facility.

This was also released yesterday (by HMRC). Under the obligations in the Protocol, import VAT will be due on goods that enter Northern Ireland from Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). The same will also broadly apply to goods entering Great Britain from Northern Ireland. However, existing flexibilities within the EU VAT rules have been used to ensure that the Government priority to minimise business impacts is met. In particular, Articles 201 and 211 of Directive 2006/112/EC mean that it is for the UK Government to determine important practical details as to how this will operate. Our approach will preserve the integrity of both the UK and EU single markets.

This was released yesterday - note the second bullet point. I believe that you will be treated as exporting the goods to NI. This was always the fear. his is the advice to carriers - who are the people moving your bass from the rest of the UK to your buyer in NI. Let me lo9ok further to see what it might mean for an NI buyer. From 1 January 2021 you need a goods movement reference to move goods from: the EU to Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales - for transit movements only Great Britain to Northern Ireland You may need to use a goods movement reference for Northern Ireland to Great Britain movements (for example a transit movement). This is a new requirement at ports using the Goods Vehicle Movement Service. You will not be able to move goods without a goods movement reference and you may face delays at the port. This service brings together multiple declaration reference numbers into a single goods movement reference. This is to speed up the clearance of goods through customs.

The frank answer is no, I don't. I will investigate. My hunch is it'll be a nightmare. Many businesses have suspended sales to NI because it is so unclear.

Congratulations on a great job.

The charge you pay is the fee for Royal Mail to pay the VAT on your behalf. Not too bad against the hassle of arranging the paperwork and not having your stuff stuck at Dover until you pay it.

Distance selling is only relevant within the EU. There will be many EU businesses that had to register under this scheme thst will no longer need to be registered. In theory, no non UK seller will charge us VAT but HMRC will charge UK VAT on import. The main difference we will see will be VAT on goods bought from private sellers outside the UK and non UK buyers will now have to pay VAT etc when the gear gets to them. Second hand gear is now between 16 and 25% more, depending on the country.

You will not be disappointed. It's a stunning bit of kit.

I've just added this to the reviews section. These amps arrived from the US a couple of days ago and I immediately booked a rehearsal studio in order to check I'd wired up the rack correctly, and to give the amps a good go. As with all my Boogie amp purchases, I was buying 'blind' but I have never been disappointed so ordered one as soon as they were announced. My first Boogie head was a Bass 400 in the mid 80's and the fact that this used the same tone stack made it the amp for me (and my back). You can see I was running through two Subway 1x15 cabs. The basses were an SVL Reserve with flats, an old Precision with rounds and my A/E fretless which is active) with flats. I was joined (socially distanced-like) by @rumblefish who brought along an active bass - and his ears! The signal path was bass - tuner - amp - rack EQ in the fx loop - cabs. The EQ's were in bypass mode. I got the unit merely because the 400 has a graphic and I did use it on my one. The amps were rack-mounted using the Mesa kit. The ears weighed a good bit more than the amp I reckon!! This review is a first impressions review and I imagine I've only scratched the surface of what it can do. First of all, a big shout out to the manual. The best one I've read so far. Not only did it have all the info on the amp, it also had a comprehensive table of the ohm settings and power distribution for a number of cab combinations (1x8ohm + 1x4ohm etc). It's a question that comes up regularly and here was a table with all the permutations and the relevant ohmage setting. So, on to the amp. The 'executive summary' is an emphatic 'wow'. The amp (I was pretty much just using the Boogie channel) has all the tone you need and the combination of gain and volume give you everything you want in terms of grind. By way of comparison, I had my channel gain (on the 400) at about 1 o'clock. I ended up at about 3 on this amp. This gave it that bit of 'bite' when digging in a bit on the bass. The EQ section is typically Boogie with loads of variation on all the controls but the biggest differences coming in with judicial use of the mid controls. I had started off with the deep switch on but decided it was not needed in the end, the high pass filter remained fully counter-clockwise. With everything set at 12 o'clock it sounded wonderful and I didn't get a bad sound out of it. To my ears, the sound was pure 'me'. It's the sound I've had since those 400 and Diesel 2x15 days right through to today. It's a sound I love and always makes me smile. This barely scratches the surface, as I said. There are so many possibilities on the amp that I neither had the time, or the ears, to fully explore all the subtleties in this brilliant package. In my opinion, Mesa have delivered again. They took me from all valve to valve/mosfet without losing any of my sound and have now taken me on to valve/digital, again, without losing any of the sound. An exceptional amp and I now just have to wait until circumstances are such that I can run it up 'in anger'.