[tzs]

> The company has a pending application for a UK banking license for the past 28 months; the turnaround time for that in the UK is 12 months

Wow...I'm a bit surprised. We've had a pending application for VAT registration in the UK since sometime in the 1st quarter of 2019. I had assumed that if a government is so short of resources that they can't manage to process applications to collect taxes for them, they would probably also be very slow on applications for financial things that don't directly give them money.

Every time we ask about our VAT application, they just say it is still processing. They told us to collect VAT, but to call it something else like "additional fee", and hold it until they get around to processing the application.

[jlokier]

I did a UK VAT registration in 2020 and it took about a month. I did one back in 2005 or so and it took a similar time. Years is exceptionally slow.

The "additional fee" process is only intended to cover a few months at most. It doesn't work for a long period as your customers can't claim back the amount paid until they receive a replacement invoice formally recordable as VAT, when your registration comes through. If "additional fee" is done for longer, that creates a situation where you end up having to lower your price to business customers who normally don't count VAT in the price because they can quickly reclaim it, but you are still paying VAT on that income (by having to set it aside). That combo is not how VAT is supposed to work.

[tzs]

I wonder if the difference is that you are in the UK? We're not. We're in the US.

Prior to the Brexit implementation we dealt with VAT on sales to EU customers using the VAT MOSS system, with Ireland being the country we were registered with.

[manquer]

4 years seems very high for VAT registration?

I have worked with some corrupt and incompetently bureaucratic global south governments even they wouldn’t take 4 years for a thing like VAT something is terribly wrong with UK.