Dear supporter First of all a huge thanks on behalf of the EU VAT Action Team to all of you who participated in the Twitterstorm and have been contacting MPs, MEPs as well as the press on behalf of the campaign - the Twitterstorm was genuinely a huge success and has started to achieve the desired result. For a full rundown on the Twitterstorm stats, please see Lorraine's update on the EU VAT Action website here: http://euvataction.org/2014/12/17/twitter-euvat-action-a-storming-success/ We are genuinely being heard and action is being taken at the highest level within the EU - which would not have happened without all of us coming together in unison the way we did. It really is incredible what we have collectively managed to achieve in such a short space of time and we should all incredibly proud of that; but, now that we have a foot in the door we need to make sure we get the rest of the way in! We have Andrus Ansip's attention, but in order for that to translate into legislative change we need to keep up the pressure by gathering support from as many individual member states as possible - as this is how we will get the changes we need passed in the time-frame we all require in order to keep trading. The next step therefore is for us to recruit people to the campaign from every member state to lobby their representative on the EU Fiscal Attache who in turn needs to lobby Pierre Moscovici. For full details exactly what we need you to do next, please see Clare's update here: http://euvataction.org/2014/12/18/its-not-all-ears-its-action-too-in-the-european-commission-on-eu-vat/ For those of you in the UK, we also have a particular problem here. There now seems to be misinformation propagating at the highest levels that "everything is OK because we get to keep our UK VAT Threshold (unless you sell via a 3rd party platform) and we have the 'One Stop Shop' to help you handle the 75 different VAT rates in the EU, so what's the big deal?" This is undermining all the hard work our campaign has been achieving in the UK and there is a risk that if the EU choose to believe it too then we are back to square one. We are therefore asking you all to help us take some specific actions to counter this: 1. PLEASE write to David Gauke - to let him know the problems that the EU VAT rules - even with his 'concessions' - are causing for you, even if you have written before... We need a large number of letters letting him know why his 'feel-good' letter to Syed is a waste of ink and why he needs to choose to listen to all of us, rather than those who just tell him what he wants to hear, to make him feel better. Please use all 3 email addresses: david@davidgauke.com gauked@parliament.uk public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gov.uk It might help to ask him to look at all the evidence of the problems on the website: http://www.euvataction.org He has ignored all of our requests to meet with him again and we not aware of anyone having had a direct reply from him to their letters? (Let us know via the comments, if yes!). So we urgently need to crank up the heat. 2. PLEASE read the below article from MEP Syed Kamall. Unfortunately there's no comment facility on his article, but he does give his Twitter ID @syedkamall So perhaps you could tweet him to let him know why his 'good news' article won't help your business? And how he has been woefully misinformed? http://www.syedkamall.co.uk/index.php/entry/vatmoss-the-latest-do-you-run-a-small-or-microbusiness As Clare says - there are no promises yet, but there IS hope. We are making progress - so please continue to do everything you can! Thanks again from all of us. Issy & the EU VAT Action Team