Amazon bankrupting my businesses – Non-UK Establishment for VAT

I own 2 small businesses that both sell on Amazon – they are saying I need to pay them £10k in VAT for one business and most likely tens of thousands for the other. Neither business has the money to pay this so they will effectively bankrupt us.

They are both UK companies registered with companies house and have 3 directors – me, my wife and my mother in law. My wife and I moved out of the UK, to the EU a couple of years ago, my mother in law still lives in the UK. Both companies currently do not turnover more than £90,000 so are not VAT registered. Our registered UK address is our UK accountant and we have one employee back in the UK who accepts/preps/ships out our stock as orders from our website and into Amazon.

I have sent them all the documentation they require. I think the problem is, we rent a 400 sq ft self storage space as our office/warehouse unit. This comes with a license agreement but it is not the same as a ‘normal’ rental contract. All bills are obviously included as it’s in a big building where they provide electricity and wifi.

Can anyone offer any advice? We simply can’t pay this so this will ruin our lives in so many ways if we can’t get it sorted out.

If I add more directors 2 more within the UK, to show that over 50% is owned within the UK, would this work at this stage? I haven’t actually told amazon we moved out of the UK (they haven’t seen international bank info etc) but I did click on the 50% non-uk ownership during verification and now shooting myself in the foot.