Mindark answers Skatteverket

[Lighterthief]

Originally Posted by billairboy

To clarify a common missunderstanding, it's not only swedish companies/people who is gone be forced to add VAT (moms). Sellers from outside Sweden can be forced to pay VAT too.

yep, but there is no VAT on european transactions. so its only swedes selling to swedes who could be liable as a sale, swede to dutch (for example) is a european transaction and has no VAT element

so if this problem is only when a swedish dude sells to a swedish dude then there is a very simple solution... u need another euro dude
swedish dude sells item to euro dude (no vat on euro transacton), euro dude sells item for same price to swedish dude 2 (no vat on euro transaction)... and swedish dude 2 has bought the item with no vat totaly legaly.... teh euro dude doesnt even need to hold the item, its just a bit of paper thats produced to show the transaction... hmm i'd sell ppl invoices for this if they needed (for a very modest fee ofc :p lol) but thats a paper trail exercise more than anything

theres even a arguement that u dont need to report this..... certainly in UK there is only a requirement to report EU sales that envolve a product.... if ur selling a service then theres no obligation to record this on a EC sales list
... so say ur depositing to mindark, to buy a gun on auction...... are you buying a product or a service? mindark is definatly a service provider imo, and the bank records would show that you paid a service provider.... is there a delivery slip to show u recieved the goods? no.... so it might be pretty tough for the authorities to argue its a product... and that you need to keep records

so the vat element is totaly unworkable imo, the areas that are of concern are profits taken out of the game... not withdraws.... just profits, that will be taxed, my guess is it will be viewed as income. but it will not affect many ppl, and if MA offered the few ppl who it does affect the ability to change thier account from a personal to a corporate account (ie withdraw into a company) then theres lots of very clever ways around these things

[Dion Red Strike]

....

I'm trying to figure this all out in my head....

Seems to me, it's fairly simple...

And, I say this as a person that owns and runs a business.. (I'm simplifying some terms for ease of reading)

First of all, the skatter-whatever-ya-call-it can kiss my big fat VAT is made for businesses. If a government, be it my own or another, wants to try and tax me if I sell my bicycle to my neighbor, they will be kissing my . Same thing applies here... If I sell my VAT (hehe, pun intended) to joe blow, it's like selling my bike. Bite me if you think I'm going to charge him sales tax (VAT). Bite me if you think I'M going to pay the government that tax.

[Lavawalker]

Originally Posted by aridash

yes, it really is that simple. so why are HSBC, BHP Billiton, Microsoft, BP and all the other big companies in the world are based in countries where they pay tax? It doesnt work like that, you can only shuffle so much off shore. they would have to move their whole main office and workforce.

You missed the point, you do not need to shift the workforce offshore, hence the splitting of the sub-divisions. Office virtualisation these days is quite simple.

In most countries you can rent a shared office space with dedicated recptionist, small office room & shared boardroom. All calls being made to your organisation in that country can be routed back to your physical office via the internet (VoIP);

Hence you can have your staff located anywhere in the world.

The office in Sweden would physically contain all the workers, though the accounts/finance/investments/sales department would be tied to the MindArk Entertainment company also offering the Entropia Universe service within the group which in business terms has all accounts/finance/payroll and sales actives located offshore (With office virtualisation) and would be governed by that countries laws (Even though all activites physically are being done remotely in another country)

And then the technical, design, development company within the group can remain with it's offices in Sweden, registered in Sweden as it is an operational wing of the business and is paid by the Entertainment company within the group. It does not generate an income, it is purely a cost. Hence governed as any other company of this nature would be by Sweden law/taxation.

Where the servers that run the service offering are located would not matter at all, they can be located within any office or anywhere in the world for that fact.

Also we are talking about a rather small company of 50 or so people, not a large multi-national as the ones you have listed above.

The relatively small cost in setting up office virtualisation makes it extremely viable and should not impact the normal running of the day to day business. Calls in and out can be made either from the swedish office through their PSTN or if most are of an international nature and they were smart about it. They could immensely reduce their outgoing costs via working through an international VoIP provider with clearinghouses located throughout the world for transfer back to the P.S.T Network.

~ Sparkz

[Dion Red Strike]

Originally Posted by Lavawalker

Also we are talking about a rather small company of 50 or so people, not a large multi-national as the ones you have listed above.

~ Sparkz

closer to 30

[Lavawalker]

Originally Posted by Dion Red Strike

closer to 30

Hi Dion

I got 45 from the sept 07 interim statement, then added a few due to the recent coders that have been employed by MindArk from their recent announcement made on this.

Never the less, they are a small company indeed, achieving big things

~ Sparkz

[Dion Red Strike]

Originally Posted by Lavawalker

Hi Dion

I got 45 from the sept 07 interim statement, then added a few due to the recent coders that have been employed by MindArk from their recent announcement made on this.

Never the less, they are a small company indeed, achieving big things

~ Sparkz

My mistake, ~30 in the Sweden office, ~10 in the Mexico office

more info on this in the Alf interview

[billairboy]

Originally Posted by Lighterthief

yep, but there is no VAT on european transactions. so its only swedes selling to swedes who could be liable as a sale, swede to dutch (for example) is a european transaction and has no VAT element

If i understands the laws right, if a swedish business/ business man sells to a non-business man/woman from a EU contry, the swede most add VAT in this case, because it is counted as "sold in sweden". So the problems is when a swede is a part of the trade.

Well i guess they are going to understand the impossibilty of the whole thing and don't realy try to inforce the laws.

[falkao]

Originally Posted by Lighterthief

yep, but there is no VAT on european transactions. so its only swedes selling to swedes who could be liable as a sale, swede to dutch (for example) is a european transaction and has no VAT element

thats only valid if you have a VAT ID and holds only for goods and not for services.

[Gurre]

Bump

[Indigo Wyrd]

I said it in the other thread, I'll say it again in this one:

If Skatteverket wants this, they'll need to pay me for collecting it.
Invoicing, postage, record-keeping (secure server storage), mailing supplies, and my time comes to $121,860 annually.

And it doesn't matter if I collect a Swedish dime or not - I still get paid, or they get nothing.

I also require a 1 year advance payment or I'm not going to do it, and they can... well, they can write letters to their embassy and cry about how some mean American isn't helping them suck money out of the 'net.

~I