Setting up for UK/EU VAT in Opencart 3

Hi all,

I use Opencart 3.0.2.0 and from 1st June will be VAT registered.

This means on pretty much all my UK and EU transactions I will be required to charge 20% on the sale price of my items to the customer. But transactions outside of the UK/EU will not be affected as VAT is not applicable on those.

I'm not 100% sure how to go about getting this right but basically I want to:

1. Set it up so a person in the EU/UK has a price including 20% VAT shown. I don't want separate VAT prices on the product page etc alienating people.
2. Set it up so a person outside of the EU/UK has a flat price that is not influenced by VAT in any way, as its simply not applicable to them.
3. Set it up so my invoices show when someone in the EU/UK buys something for £X that it shows that 20% of it was VAT, but the person still simply pays the advertised price
4. There will be a few items I sell (childrens books as an example) which are VAT exempt. So I guess there must be some way of differentiating so VAT is not charged on these even if the customer is in a VAT zone?

What I don't want is for people to start seeing item price + VAT, I would want someone in the VAT zone to be able to purchase the item for exactly the same price as someone outside of the VAT zone but it just to show a different breakdown (and of course I would then be taking the hit on the VAT for those in the VAT Zone)

I have had a google but cannot see any guides aimed specifically at doing this, any advice would be appreciated.

Best regards

Luke

A bit of a strange way of ding things and probably why you haven't found a solution for it, unfortunately, it is not something that is straightforward to simply enable/disable. It will require some coding change to display the price how you want it. Hopefully someone else will chime in on how to do the display you are looking for.

In the meantime, here is how to set-up your EU VAT rates, zones and products.

1. Set-up your Geo Zones - e.g. VAT Zone, Non-VAT Zone and add the correct countries to each.
2. Set-up your Tax rate for 20% if you do not already have one and attach the VAT Zone Geo Zone to it.
3. Set-up your Tax Class 'Taxable Goods' or edit it if it already exists. and add to it your Tax rate - Based on Shipping Address.

That's you VAT sorted out

4. For your products, edit each one and on the data tab, assign a Tax Class (e.g. Taxable Goods), unless it is a book or other non-vatable product, then simply select --None--

That's your products sorted out

Thanks for your reply.

I have created a VAT 20% Tax Zone based on UK and all EU countries. I have also got a Geo IP tool installed to detect where a person is from which influences whether or not they are charged the price with VAT. ie someone from USA gets the price pre-vat, someone from EU gets price+VAT

I am now as you say going through my products and applying VAT to everything except the books I sell as they are not vat applicable.

The next thing I am trying to do is
a) Get my VAT number and company reg number on invoices to the customer
b) Display the Price INCL VAT on category and search results pages for people from countries in the VAT zone

Could you please help?

To get VAT Number and Company Reg on your Invoice is pretty straight forward.
Simply edit the template file admin/view/template/sale/order_invoice.twig and enter it where you wish. Make sure to clear your theme cache afterwards via the cog at top-right of your admin dashboard.

VAT is displayed already in category and search results pages:
https://demo.opencart.com/index.php?rou ... path=25_28

how would you know if no shipping/payment information has been given yet?

letxobnav wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 01, 2019 6:18 pm

Code: Select all

Set it up so a person in the EU/UK 

how would you know if no shipping/payment information has been given yet?

I bought and installed ClearThinking's GeoIP Lookup tool. When someone goes to the website it looks up their country and sets the session data from that (which includes the tax relevant to the users country).

I can confirm I have now done the following
- Added VAT to all my 19,000+ products that its relevant to
- Added VAT number and company registration number to footer of website, visible on all pages
- Tested that product pages show price inclusive of VAT for EU/UK users using a free proxy service (HideMyAss using NL, DE Proxys as well as checking myself from UK IP)
- Tested that product pages show the VAT exclusive price for users outside of the specified EU/UK Tax zone I created (HideMyAss using USA Proxy)
- Now I need to get VAT number and company reg on invoices produced by OpenCart but based on the advice given in this thread I should have that done shortly.

The above all works ok. The issue I now have, is that on the Search Results page or the Category view page, it shows the price excluding VAT for UK/EU users. How would I go about getting this to show price incl VAT for EU/UK users and the simple flat price for people outside of EU/UK?

uksitebuilder wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 01, 2019 5:52 pm

To get VAT Number and Company Reg on your Invoice is pretty straight forward.
Simply edit the template file admin/view/template/sale/order_invoice.twig and enter it where you wish. Make sure to clear your theme cache afterwards via the cog at top-right of your admin dashboard.

VAT is displayed already in category and search results pages:
https://demo.opencart.com/index.php?rou ... path=25_28

This worked nicely thanks mate (Ref editing the invoice)

Ref VAT displaying on the category and search result pages though this is not the case for me. This appears to be the final thing I need to get right (That I'm aware of). Here is a link to one of my category pages as example: titancards.co.uk/pokemon-sealed-products/blister-packs

**I CONFESS SCHOOLBOY ERROR, THE CATEGORY PAGE I WAS LOOKING AT WAS CACHED PRIOR TO ME APPLYING VAT**
You are correct that VAT inclusive price is indeed showing on the category pages that have actually been refreshed from cache.

I just loaded the category page and it showed USA the price incl UK VAt. I quickly discovered that my nitropack addon was set to pre-cache generated pages, since turning this feature off all is now well! :-D

Thanks all for your input.

In the meantime, here is how to set-up your EU VAT rates, zones and products.

1. Set-up your Geo Zones - e.g. VAT Zone, Non-VAT Zone and add the correct countries to each.
2. Set-up your Tax rate for 20% if you do not already have one and attach the VAT Zone Geo Zone to it.
3. Set-up your Tax Class 'Taxable Goods' or edit it if it already exists. and add to it your Tax rate - Based on Shipping Address.

That's you VAT sorted out

4. For your products, edit each one and on the data tab, assign a Tax Class (e.g. Taxable Goods), unless it is a book or other non-vatable product, then simply select --None--

That's your products sorted out
[/quote]

I have done exactly as you explained above, however its still not working for us. Please see the attached screenshots.

We Only charge VAT in UK , and rest of the world zero Vat. i made Europe as geo zone, added some countries but still vat is charged.

The other problem is, edit product - data- Tax class you can only choose one option either Uk 20% or 0% (For customers outside Uk ). Dont know what to choose there..

May be some setting needs to be done.

Any help please.

Hello there,

I was looking nearly desperate to get to this topic. since there is no such clear topic on how to add VAT percentages and zones to the EU countries.
As far as the VAT legislation is pretty much straight forward.
I am a musician from Romania and I want to open a shop that will "serve" Romania and all European countries and also outside of the EU.,. and the VAT legislation says simple that the BUYER has to pay the VAT of HIS country.

so the VAT has to be taxed according the SHIPPING Address.

I will be more than happy IF any guru from here will help me implement the different zones .. I will work for free with my recording studio to make a professional video tutorial on how to properly add VAT under the given conditions:
- you are in a country A
- you have to send your merchandise to countries B, C, D, E where countries B and C are from UE and D and E are non Ue countries
- each country has a different VAT so the product should have a different price in the end + shipment

- please help me and I will help the community back with a PRO video in simple steps

Here are the VAT we all have to use in open cart in order to legally sell in UE

TVA

AT - Austria 20%
BE - Belgium 21%
BG - Bulgaria 20%
Croatia 20%
CY - Cyprus 19%
CZ - Czech Republic 21%
DE - Germany 19%
DK - Denmark 25%
EE - Estonia 20%
ES - Spain 21%
FI - Finland 24%
FR - France 20%
GB - United Kingdom 20%
GR - Greece 24%
HR - Croatia 25%
HU - Hungary 27%
IE - Ireland 23%
IT - Italy 22%
LT - Lithuania 21%
LU - Luxembourg 17%
LV - Latvia 21%
MT - Malta 18%
NL - Netherlands 21%
PO - Poland 23%
PT - Portugal 23%
RO - Romania 19%
SE - Sweden 25%
SI - Slovenia 22%
SK - Slovakia 20%


Other countries that are in Europe but aren't part of the EU are:

AL - Albania
AD - Andorra
AM - Armenia
BA - Bosnia
BY - Belarus
CH - Switzerland
FO - Faeroe Islands
GE - Georgia
GI - Gibraltar
IS - Iceland
MC - Monaco
MK - Macedonia
NO - Norway
RU - Russian Federation
SM - San Marino
TR - Turkey
UA - Ukraine
VA - Vatican City State



Thank you in advance for considering to help me and the whole OpenCart community
IF you can help let's do it.

Much appreciated
Mike

Mike_Shop wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 11, 2020 8:20 pm

As far as the VAT legislation is pretty much straight forward.
I am a musician from Romania and I want to open a shop that will "serve" Romania and all European countries and also outside of the EU.,. and the VAT legislation says simple that the BUYER has to pay the VAT of HIS country.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. It depends on what you are selling and the total value of your sales to each country. If your sales are above a certain value you may have to register for and pay VAT in that country.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/t ... consumer-1
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-exports ... -countries