Lectronz and IOSS

We sell lots in the UK (services and goods), and handle UK VAT, obviously.

Some of you may be surprised that A&A sell all over the world as well - development circuit boards. I have mentioned it, I am sure.

For now, we have used Amazon and Tindie.

Both are a problem...

Amazon

Two good aspects of Amazon, one is they will do fulfilment, so we send stock and they ship to customers. and secondly they handle selling to EU, etc, and the VAT and so on. We do not have to worry about it, and for these exports we are paid the VAT exclusive price.

Amazon have been arseholes, they unlisted the most popular product on a mere accusation, took months to sort with frozen stock, and finally returned after I threatened to sue. We lost all the reputation and reviews, and new listing of same item is selling 20% of the rate.

We now only list this one popular(ish) product on Amazon, as they do sell some, and sell to EU easily. But they did screw us over for no reason.

Tindie

Tindie are useless at tax and VAT. We have to do the shipping. However, we have integrated their API such that staff can see a list of orders, click and get postage via Royal Mail (with all the customs declaration stuff). They put in a jiffy bag, stick on label, and postman collects with the rest of the days postage.

Tindie were selling pretty well, close to Amazon rates, and sometimes more. But we had to ship. The much more slick postage integration I recently did makes it a lot easier and my staff can take over many of the products we sell without any hassle.

Tindie then shut down with no warning for maintenance, lied about it for two weeks, finally said new owners, made site live but with the one important feature of "paying us" (or anyone else) missing. We shipped some more orders, but have now zeroed all stock until sorted. They claim to have sent balance, but we will not know for sure for a day or two.

Lectronz

So we have signed up with Lectronz. They are tiny compared to Tindie, but that seems to be changing (I wonder why!).

They work the same as Tindie, free to list, charge a fee for sales, and card processing charges too (stripe). They even have Tindie API integration to import products (they then need a little work, and Tindie may be blocking some of it).

But they have a lot of extra bits...

Better shipping rates

The shipping is saner, it is all linked to sets of countries, but is all weight based. You set the shipping for a weight range, and you can also set a tariff rate for US as a percentage! This is lacking in Tindie.

They don't have a shipping rate that is price + price per kg (I have asked) as that would be even better as that is how we pay Royal Mail for international shipping.

Tariffs for US

But this means sales to US show (and charge) a specific tariff fee - very clear, and we link in to doing PDDP shipping with Royal Mail.

VAT for UK

We can, and have, told them we are VAT registered and selling to UK has 20% VAT. They shows this and add it at point of sale. Simple.

VAT for EU

This is where it gets fun. For orders shipped to EU, under (I think) €150, they will automatically work out the EU VAT based on target country, and add to the price.

They deduct this from what they pay us, and settle with EU VAT authorities for us.

They then tell us an IOSS code to use with Royal Mail to record as a pre-paid VAT. The customer then has no hassle with paying VAT on import.

This is really hassle free for us and the customer.

Other countries still have VAT on import and so is any order to EU over €150, but they managed to make that all very clear on the checkout page.

Do buy some stuff, here. I will be adding more and more soon.

Far from #Brexit - some civilised drinks

It happens that, at the time, my friends and I were far from Brexit. Indeed, we were exactly 14.48054467N and 94.175880624W (or -449786.479813 -6160429.922092 1584520.022083 in ECEF) which is in the Pacific ocean.

However, as there were a few Brits on the ship, we got the concierge to invite some to our suite for a few drinks. We engineered nearly live BBC on the TV via a convoluted set of kit and VPN back to the UK, and we had my brexit clock.

It was remarkably civilised, with those for and against agreeing that whatever we do, we now have to find a way to live with this and make the best of any opportunities created.

It is the first time we have "hosted" a party from the suit, but butler managed it quite well and the ship even provided a couple of bottles of champagne for the party.

Amusingly at least one couple assumed it was a scummy NCL promotion to try and up-sell the suites, LOL.

GPS made easy

I am surprised how simple GPS is these days. For only £12 or so (from RS of all places, part 908-4085) I can get a small module with built in antenna that runs of 3.3V and provides serial GPS data and a very precise PPS output, is only 15mm square, and easily soldered to a PCB. It even has built in RTC that can run off a small button cell battery for fast fix and retaining time of day.

I have yet to decide on the best applications of this, apart from simple things like a speedo for a bicycle. There are applications with location logging (that dump to WiFi when back in range), or even if you just need a reliable time source for something like a door entry system (or a Brexit countdown clock, LOL).

A clock showing how long until sunset, wherever you are, would be cool :-)

I have made a module with GPS (the Adafruit module, as I found that before the RS part), and a display, so I can have a play around with it.

P.S. I have it set up for my bike, even with amount of daylight left...

Brexit

Back in 2016 I posted how there really was not enough information for anyone to vote on the referendum to leave the EU. How could members of the public make any sort of informed decision.

We are now way down the line, and things are sadly only slightly better.

I am amazed how this has polarised the country. Even people in "my bubble" can be massively Brexit still and there is no reasoning with them. And so much disinformation still exists, even now where Boris Johnson said we could ban Shark Fin Soup if we left the EU. WTF is that as an argument? Who cares about Shark Fin Soup?! From what I can tell it is either "not true, WTO rules means you can't ban it", or "true, WTO rules have an exception, but that means we can ban it now even in the EU". Still the mad sound bites of disinformation persist even three years later.

Is change good?

If you are a good businessman then change can always been good - you can always exploit it. Even when you look at war and the blitz spirit (as has been evoked regarding Brexit?!) there were "businessmen" that made money (and were illegal as black market traders). Imagine in the blitz, in an air-raid shelter and bombs dropping - we survived. But imagine if 52% of people in there voted for the bombs?

And if you know a change will happen you can be even better at exploiting it. It is coming out how some people in politics have direct personal gain linked to Brexit. Scary.

But "good" for some careful businessmen will always be "bad" for someone. That money they make comes from somewhere.

In my personal view I cannot see Brexit being good for the UK overall. It seems counter intuitive to be isolationist, and then still want to trade with the world.

Personally, I am hoping that I am finally doing well enough in business that I, and my family, can cope. But that is by no means certain, and I am scared! Even if it was the case, I would not wish the hardship that will ensue on everyone else, whether my friends, my staff (also friends), my customers (also many friends), or anyone else.

Limbo

One of the huge issues is uncertainty.

A50 can be revoked, or delayed, so nobody knows for sure what will happen right up to the wire!

We cannot have this again - we need the A50 process to be 100% certain, no delays and no extensions, and no way to revoke. A country leaving EU makes one decision to do so and then has time to make it happen, and that is it. That needs to be the case even if the UK decides, again, to leave.

What we have now is hugely damaging, maybe more so than having left already!

As EU members we should change the A50 process to fix this!

We import from China!

What interested me was comments from a close friend. Smart chap. We make products that use chips that come from outside the EU, like China. The comment is that Brexit is therefore not so much of an issue, surely.

But we (UK) don't import from China, we (EU) do. So when we Brexit, we (UK) have to have the trade agreement to import those parts to UK (not EU). Is that in place? - well I don't think so, even after many years.

It is so easy for anyone, even smart people, to miss some of these obvious details. Brexit is not simple.

[I am not sure China is necessarily the best example, but assuming just because we trade with a non EU country before Brexit does not mean we, as the UK, have a trade deal to allow trade after Brexit. It needs negotiating. The government claim to have managed to negotiate several "continuation" deals already, which is a good start, but they needed negotiating, and more are needed still, they are not just what automatically happens when we Brexit, which is what people were assuming.]

Will of the people!

This is perhaps the most annoying part! We accept people can change their minds as we have a general election every few years, but somehow Brexit is a "fixed point in time" (DrWho?).

In fact that the referendum was a "poll" (as stated in the legislation). It was not a mandate. And then it was (as decided by courts) conducted outside the legal constraints for such campaigns. Had it been a mandate it would have been struck down, and was not only because it was just a poll.

As I said in my 2016 blog post, I did not know what was the right way to vote. I voted to remain, but I did not do that as an informed decision by any means.

Now, we have some clues on the issues with disentangling the UK from the EU. At best we have some good deal with EU - but such a deal means we have to abide by a lot of EU law on the way we do things with no say in such law! The alternative is not having a good deal, which is worse.

We have the crazy situation now that calls for a "people's vote" are called out as undemocratic. The idea that asking the "people" to vote on this is not democratic is, well, mental!

We also have the issue that this is "one sided". We leave, and no way we ever re-join on anything like he deal we have now. We stay, and we can vote to leave again in a few years if the EU goes OTT and we don't like it. So leaving is a "really really sure you want to do this" type of thing.

Breaking the deadlock!

I see the only way to resolve this is something that everyone can see is the (current) "will of the people", such as another referendum or a general election fought on the Brexit issue. Only then can anyone say, again, "you lost, get over it".

That will still be bad. A lot of people convinced that Brexit is right will be cross. I don't know what to say. I have yet to find a single person who can explain the benefit of leaving!

I do feel that if Brexit is cancelled, whatever government we have will need to make a big issue of "why Brexit". They need to tackle each and every one of the reasons Brexiters wanted to leave, in detail, and with actual change. Some things are simple (blue passports), and some are not so simple, but they all need addressing. I feel we can sort the underlying issues and stay in the EU. Why not?

Bad EU laws?

But are there bad EU laws we don't want?

Yes, absolutely, there are laws that, in my view, go too far, or get it wrong. Not least of which was the damn cookie stuff creating those damn cookie consent warnings on every damn web site! That was technically stupid in so many ways, and I am sure many other such laws are "wrong". Sadly GDPR adds to that - mostly good - a tad bad.

The problem is that there are always wrong laws, and the UK has passed many (RIPA / IPA) that have bad things in them on both moral and technical grounds.

The EU is not immune too this, and neither is the UK. But leaving the EU means we have no say in such EU laws. We cannot fix them. It does not, however, mean we can ignore them as almost any trade deal will mean complying to standards set in such laws.

And to be fair, most of the laws are good! As a manufacturer, the hassle for CE marking is a nightmare now, but even though it is hard work and costs a lot of money it is all "good". It stops stuff catching fire, for example. The UK would mirror almost all EU safety laws as that is both sensible, and needed to sell to EU!

Conclusion

• I'd like to stay in the EU, though a lot of that is because of the obvious chaos caused by leaving it at this point.
• I'd like to see all of the underlying issues that Brexiters want addressed looked in to and sorted, as part of the EU. This is important - a lot of people are unhappy, and this needs addressing!
• I'd like to see MEPs taken a lot more seriously by all - this is how we shape the EU to be what we want!
• I'd always consider leaving EU in future as an option, but really only makes sense if EU starts to really fall apart.
• I'd like to see A50 process fixed for any country planning to leave to remove any "left in limbo" effect - this is absolutely crazy!

Countdown and clock changes

As I mentioned, for the Brexit clock, I had to allow for the clocks changing (something many such countdown clocks do not allow).

Basically, one of the days between now and (the current) Brexit is 25 hours long. This, in itself, is not complex.

I have tinkered with the way I do this a few times, and eventually came up with this, starting with how many whole days...

• Work out a time for UTC midnight on target date
• Work out a time for UTC midnight today
• Divide time difference (as seconds) by 86400 (a day) for number of days
• If the current local time (HH:MM:SS) is on or after the target local time (HH:MM:SS) take off one day from that total.

That is the easy bit, and means that the number of days changes at the local time (HH:MM:SS) of the target, so for Brexit, changes at 11pm local time exactly each day. What normally happens is the time part then counts down from 23:59:59 until 00:00:00 at 11pm local time the next day.

However, working out the time part is one area that took me a bit of thought. In the end I make use of the fact that linux mktime() function allows tm_mday to be any value and it adjusts.

So, what I do is :-

• Create a date for the target date/time, local time.
• Subtract the calculated number of days from the tm_mday part of that.
• Work out time difference from that point to current time, and convert to hours, minutes and seconds.

The effect of that is that once the day changes, the time part goes down without a discontinuity. It means that on the day that has the clock change the clock will start counting down from 24:59:59 instead of 23:59:59.

For Brexit, that means that 11pm on Saturday 26th October 2019 it will go to from 5 days 00:00:00 to 4 days 24:59:59 and count down for 25 hours until 11pm on Sunday 27th October when it goes to 3 days 23:59:59.

Of all the ways to work this out, I think this is the best. It means days are counted to the local time on each day that matches the final target local time (so for Brexit, its counts a day at 11pm local time each day), and then that the time part counts without a discontinuity down to 00:00:00 at the same local time the next day.

Yes, I put far too much thought in to this.

Brexit countdown clock

Having made the environmental sensor, I have now cut down the design to just the processor and OLED display so I can make other things.

One example is a Brexit clock. I have put the code and PCB and 3D case on GitHub (here). It may need regular code updates, obviously :-)

It did raise one issue though. Most of the Brexit clocks I see, like Sky News's (here) seem to be an hour out. Brexit is at 11pm but they show days plus time that would be midnight.

Now, I know why... Someone is being lazy and simply dividing time of Brexit minus time now by 86400 and ignoring the clock change. One of the days between now and Brexit is 25 hours long, but that does not stop it being "one day".

My clock gets it right, obviously.

There are other uses for the app - and as I am taking one of my grandsons on a his first cruise, I thought he may like this...

He heard the phones in the suite have a button labeled "pizza" :-)
He is already packing!

P.S. This is why I have a milling machine and a 3D printer! I came up with the idea over coffee this morning at around 9am. I had to design a new PCB and a new case, mill the PCB, 3D print the case, and assemble it all, as well as make the code. I had a working version by around noon. My grandson is going to love this, I am sure!

Making Tax Digital

The "challenge" continues.

Just a reminder - EVERY UK VAT REGISTERED COMPANY (that has to be registered) must be using the new "Making Tax Digital" API to submit VAT returns from April 2019. Do not forget!

We have s/w for this (Onion Accounts), tested, and approved, yay!

So we are trying to put the company (A&A) on the "pilot" so we can actually submit our own VAT return using the new system, before it is all mandatory. A final double check that all is working as it should.

We get to authorise it all, using OAUTH, and get an access token for the read:vat and write:vat access. But it does not work, we are told we are not authorised!

Checking the government gateway VAT pages it seems we have to "sign up" for the pilot. That may explain things, except if we are not signed up then why allow us to "authorise" the access? Surely the OAUTH process should be saying "You are not signed up for MTD VAT" rather than giving the access token and the failing when we try and get the VAT obligations? Crazy...

So, let's try and sign up.... Nope. We get "This service is only available to some limited companies, sole traders, partnerships and VAT groups." which is not that helpful.

We also get "You will be able to sign up for this service from April 2019."

Hang on?!?! This is "Sign up for the pilot". Why would I be able to sign up for a pilot in April 2019 when the pilot is surely over (as MTD VAT is mandatory from April 2019)? Surely they are not making people "sign up" for the mandatory process (they call it a "service" which I dislike).

A bit more digging and we find "You will not be able to take part in the pilot at the moment if you:" ... "currently trade with, or have traded with the EU".

Two issues with this...

Firstly, surely you want people on the pilot with the complex edge cases, not the "simple" cases. You want things to break (if they are going to break) in the pilot and not once the process goes live. So why exclude these edge cases?

Secondly, and this is where the mindset has got us brexit, what UK company does not trade with the EU? Hardly any, I bet. All of our customers and suppliers are in the EU! Yes, almost every single one is also in the UK, but the UK is part of the EU.

Is a Dutch company trading with a Dutch supplier, "trading with the EU"? If yes, then so is a UK company trading with a UK supplier. If no, then neither is a UK company trading with that Dutch supplier. Either the supplier (or customer) is in the EU, or they are not. They are not suddenly "not in the EU" if in the same country as the trading party. Next we'll say that trading with someone else in Bracknell is not trading with the UK, it is trading with Bracknell.

The ideas that there is the "UK", and there is this separate non-UK "EU", an idea perpetrated by HMRC in this case, is part of the problem, IMHO.

Update: Sounds like the "traded with EU" restriction goes away next week, so we may be able to make some progress!

Update: (4th Dec) We have "applied" for the trial.

Update: (5th Dec) We managed to file a VAT return, just in time.

Data Protection

So there is the new Data Protection Bill to put in place the rules under the General Data Protection Regulation, under EU law.

Well, there is a lot to this, so this is just a placeholder post really - to say there is a lot of shit going down, and with any luck I can post more about this in due course.

This, and the NIS directive, almost feel like exactly the sort of thing those Brexit voters were wanting to kill off!

EU mobile roaming after brexit

I saw an article yesterday, well, someone read it to my whilst I was reading my Ada book, on EU mobile roaming.

The theory is that the "free" roaming in EU will continue after brexit because the Great Repeal Bill will maintain all the existing EU laws as UK laws when we leave, including the requirement to do the roaming at no extra cost.

First off, it may be that the deals the mobile operates have will indeed continue, and maybe we will retain the "free" roaming in some form.

However, a UK law cannot really enforce that. Right now the operators in UK and mainland Europe are all subject to the EU law saying they have to allow the roaming like this. When we leave the EU, those mainland Europe operators will NO LONGER be subject to that requirement when it comes to UK mobile operators roaming to EU as UK will not be in EU. So those operators can go back to charging UK operators a small fortune for roaming calls, texts, and data.

If the UK tells UK operators they have to allow roaming at same price as UK and the foreign operators charge a lot for roaming, what will happen? Someone loses out, or roaming becomes no longer an option. More likely is the operators which you can use when roaming get to be few and far between.

I also suspect that EU law retained in UK law will not necessarily force UK operators to allow EU phone users to roam to UK. After all, they are foreigners, and all that... So even the logic of reciprocal arrangements does not necessarily hold true.

Somehow the person writing the article thought UK law could bind all of these EU phone companies to play nice after we have left the EU - do people not think these things through?

Brexit Broadband

More questions than answers here, and I would not be surprised if nobody really knows the answers (yet).

UK leaving EU should not, in itself, have an impact on the broadband services A&A sell. We only sell broadband in the UK. There is quite a bit of regulation of communications providers, and some of that may change once we leave, but should not be a massive impact, we hope.

But what of Northern Ireland? We provide services there. If NI leaves UK and becomes part of a united Ireland (and presumably part of EU)?

And what of Scotland? If Scotland separates from England, do both parts stay a part of the EU as they were before, and then England leaves EU, leaving Scotland still in EU? Or does Scotland somehow leave EU as part of breaking from UK? No idea. But either way, what if Scotland is a separate country?

At present, BT plc operate the local loop and exchanges, and (trading as BT Wholesale) sell us circuits that link premises in England (and Wales), Scotland, and Northern Ireland to host links in London. We sell to people in all three areas.

We do not know if a split would be a BT Scotland as a separate company? And we do not know if circuits in Scotland can continue to connect to a host link in London? Would we need a POP in Edinburgh to keep selling to Scottish customers?

As a business we do very little international trade. We have been known to sell the odd piece of equipment, paid on a card, in advance. We got stung on at least one occasion. It is quite rare. But would we want to provide broadband to someone in another country?

Issues, off the top of my head...

• Currency - how to price things in Euros, or Scottish pounds? Bitcoin anyone?
• Direct Debit and payment - how to get the money to us?
• Disputes and legal issues - bad enough Scottish courts now, but what of Scottish ADR?
• Regulations - meeting all EU communication provider regulations even though not in EU?!
• VAT, how much, who paid to? EU stuff is bad enough now, and we managed to avoid it.
• Export tariffs even? Not just on broadband as a service but routers we sell, etc?

It may be that we have to stop selling to people not in the county we are in even? Or maybe it will be easy somehow? Or maybe we have to create a separate Scottish company?

Right now - I have no idea!