Preparing businesses for Brexit

 

As we move toward the fast approaching leave date for Brexit, HMRC have recently issued advice to UK businesses intended to assist in preparing them for the potential impact that a no-deal Brexit may have on their European trading activities.

This advice is especially relevant to businesses that only trade in the EU and that are registered for VAT with HMRC. There are three key action points for businesses that have a relationship with other European countries to consider:

• Obtain registration for a UK Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) number

• Consider whether they are capable of dealing with import and/or export declarations themselves using specialist software or whether they should now seek to engage the services of an agent for these purposes.

• Establish whether the businesses currently facilitating movements of goods will require additional information from them to complete safety and security declarations, or whether they will need to submit these declarations themselves.
 
Although Brexit presently provides a lot of uncertainty for UK business, preparation for the unknown is always best practice. We would strongly urge any relevant UK business to start to consider the above in order to mitigate any potential negative impact on their trading activities as a result of Brexit.