Intro: Most guides to selling on Amazon UK say to register for VAT once turnover crosses £90,000. That's the UK-resident threshold, and it doesn't apply to you. An Indian exporter with no UK establishment is a Non-Established Taxable Person under HMRC's rules, and the registration threshold for an NETP is zero — VAT registration is required from your first taxable sale, not after any revenue milestone. Get the registration flow right and Amazon UK is genuinely accessible with no UK company at all. Get this one detail wrong and the fix happens retroactively, with HMRC, after stock is already in a UK warehouse.
What Global Selling actually asks for
No UK company is needed to sell on Amazon.co.uk from India — Amazon Global Selling runs on your existing Indian business credentials. Registration itself is a single account creation flow through Amazon's own Global Selling registration process: identity proof, address proof, and business registration documents (your Importer Exporter Code and GST registration), plus a UK or international bank account Amazon can pay out to — INR conversion happens on Amazon's side, so an existing Indian account works.
That single account then covers selling across multiple European marketplaces from one registration, which is a genuine convenience if the UK is a first stop rather than the only stop — but it doesn't change the UK-specific compliance sitting underneath it, which is where most of the actual work is.
The VAT number you need before your first sale, not after £90,000
This is the detail worth getting right before anything else. UK-established businesses register for VAT once turnover crosses £90,000 in a rolling 12 months. That threshold does not exist for a Non-Established Taxable Person — a business with no UK establishment making taxable supplies in the UK, which describes an Indian exporter shipping into a UK Amazon fulfilment centre exactly. The obligation to register begins with your first unit landing in a UK FBA warehouse or your first sale to a UK customer, whichever comes first, and HMRC expects notification within 30 days of that trigger.
We've covered the full mechanics of UK VAT registration and ongoing filing for Indian D2C brands elsewhere — the short version relevant here is that the zero threshold isn't a technicality to plan around later; it's the actual starting condition for anyone using FBA into the UK.
EORI: the customs half of the same requirement
VAT and EORI travel together but aren't the same registration. VAT is what you charge and remit on sales; an EORI number is what UK customs uses to identify you as the party moving goods across the border, and without one, inbound FBA shipments simply won't clear. Amazon's own guidance frames both as required within 90 days of an FBA launch, though that's Amazon's operational deadline for having the numbers on file in Seller Central — the underlying HMRC VAT obligation itself, as above, starts from first sale, not on a 90-day grace period. Treat Amazon's window as the outside deadline for paperwork already in motion, not as license to wait.
Getting an EORI number itself is a straightforward HMRC application, and the two registrations are more linked than most guides suggest: once a VAT registration is in place, HMRC frequently issues an EORI number automatically alongside it, and processing for a VAT-registered applicant is often immediate. Apply without a VAT number yet and it's still possible — you get a non-VAT EORI in the meantime, typically within a couple of working days — but the cleaner sequence, if both are still ahead of you, is getting the VAT registration moving first rather than treating the two as unrelated errands.
What it costs to run
Amazon UK's Professional selling plan currently runs £25 a month excluding VAT — a different fee structure from Amazon.ae, which has no monthly subscription fee under its current offer. Layered on top, Amazon has been running new-seller incentives for the UK lane: up to 10% back on a seller's first $50,000 in branded sales, plus separate credits toward fulfilment (~$200), inbound placement (~$400), and advertising (~$50). As with any incentive programme, verify what's currently live on Amazon's own page before building a specific number into a launch budget — these terms move, and a stale figure in a founder's spreadsheet is worse than no figure at all.
Documents and deadlines, side by side:
| Requirement | What it's for | When it's due |
|---|---|---|
| IEC + GST registration | Registering the Amazon seller account itself | Before account creation |
| UK VAT registration | Charging and remitting VAT as an NETP | Before first taxable sale — zero threshold |
| EORI number | Customs clearance on inbound FBA shipments | Before goods can clear into a UK warehouse |
| Bank account (Indian or international) | Receiving payouts, converted to INR | Before account activation |
There's a sequencing trap worth naming directly: it's entirely possible to get an Amazon UK seller account approved and a listing live before VAT and EORI are sorted, because Amazon's own account-creation flow doesn't hard-block on either at the point of signup. That gap is exactly where founders get caught — a listing goes live, a sale happens, and only afterward does it become clear that the sale was legally required to carry VAT from day one, with no grace period to catch up on retroactively. The account going live isn't the signal that the business is compliant; it's a separate system that doesn't check.
Worth settling before you register
- Start the VAT and EORI applications in parallel with the Amazon account, not after — both take real processing time, and neither is optional at any sales volume.
- Confirm your IEC and GST details are current before the application, since a mismatch between Amazon's KYC and your registered business details is a common cause of stalled verification.
- Model the £25 monthly fee and current incentive terms into your first-quarter numbers, rather than assuming Amazon.ae's fee-free current offer as a UK baseline — the two marketplaces don't run the same commercial terms.
- If you're also weighing Amazon.ae, the account mechanics are genuinely different between the two — no UAE trade licence is required either for Amazon's own Global Selling route, but the VAT treatment diverges sharply.
£90,000 is the UK-resident VAT threshold. For an Indian exporter with no UK establishment, the threshold is zero, and it has been from the first sale.
None of this makes Amazon UK harder to reach than it looks — no UK company, one Global Selling account, and a genuinely fast route to a live listing. It just means the paperwork that actually gates a UK launch is VAT and EORI, not company formation, and it's worth having both moving before the first shipment rather than after Amazon's own account settings ask for them. We handle UK VAT registration and EORI as part of onboarding, on the same compliance groundwork the rest of a UK entry needs, so a seller account doesn't go live faster than the paperwork behind it.