Google AdWords and VAT

With the new financial year having only just begun, it has been reported that many companies have had to deal with a few issues regarding their Google AdWords accounts.

It seems that the accounts departments of many businesses had failed to correctly deal with invoices received from Google AdWords and as a result appeared to hit a brick wall with HMRC.

It appears that when setting up a Google AdWords account as a business, customers who provide a VAT number are in fact not charged VAT, a fact that it seems a lot of companies' failed to realise until it was too late. As a result of Google not charging VAT, companies will be required to account for this on their VAT return or face a good telling off from Mr Tax Man.

It has also been reported that, because Google is based in Ireland, if customers fail to declare that they are a business or fail to provide a VAT number then they will be charged Irish VAT. It can get quite complicated at the best of times so our advice is to make sure you clearly read the help section that Google provide as it breaks down all the niggly bits of the billing procedure and will help to make sure that you don't suffer any problems with HMRC.

Speak to your accounts team and make sure that you're on the ball with Google AdWords…no one likes having the tax man on their back.