Eu Vat One Stop Shop

Store Builder Feedback
1

As some of you might know, the way VAT works in the EU is going to completely change from July 1 2021 on. I just wrote this to cs-cart:

Hi, I am wondering if cs-cart plans to change their tax setup, so we can use it with the new EU regulations?
Basically, what we (and every other EU store needs), is:
1. Have products show INCL VAT on the front-end but have a final calculation at checkout clearly showing the netto and brutto pricing. Of course discounts always need to be taken off the total amount before tax is being calculated, because why should we pay tax over money people have not spent?
2. This goes for most EU stores but it has to be a setting because not 100% of the stores will want this: Products have to cost the same on the front-end incl VAT, independent of the VAT percentage of the EU country. Meaning a product costs the same incl vat for a customer in Austria (with 21% VAT) as in Germany (with 19% VAT).
If a company however orders using a valid EU VAT number from another country, the VAT has to become 0%.
If an order from outside the EU comes in, the VAT also becomes 0%
On the forum and bug tracker, there also have been numerous topics about this, every year, again and again. Like: https://forum.cs-cart.com/topic/22027-promotion-taxes-bug/
This alone should be reason for cs-cart to once and for all fix these calculations, but I am hoping the new regulations might motivate you to finally do this because from july 1 on, cs-cart is basically unusable in the entire EU.
Has anybody else thought about this? Any EU developers who might want to try and tackle this once and for all?
2

It's really frustrating that the issue isn't fully appreciated. Therefor we decided to get this custom developed by Simtech Dev a while ago. This also greatly helps with charging 0% VAT for ICP customers. It were a decent number of hours charged and there are still parts where it's not fully integrated. I fully agree excl vat prices, but show including vat, should be default CS-Cart functionality.

We are setting up the one stop system by creating a rate area for each country. We integrated an API connection with Exact that can connect a rate-area to a VAT-code (not vat number). This will give us the data we need to correctly file our OSS-taxes.

3

Thanks for your response. It's indeed very frustrating that cs-cart just ignores all the problems we have with tax/vat. They miss out on a lot of users from the EU this way.

My idea is also to set up a tax rate for each country... the problem is however the pricing will then also be different in each country and you'll get ugly prices (meaning less sales). So a product would be cheaper in Germany, than in the Netherlands, for example. Because VAT will be added to the base price.

So far I have "fixed" this issue with a promotion that is not visible for the customer. So if a customer from the Netherlands logs in, he will automatically get a small discount to make up for the extra VAT.

IMO the easiest way to fix this would be if we could enter prices incl vat and that the cart then reduces the tax by the amount needed correctly.... and also reduce the amount incl vat in case of tax exempt customers.

4

That's smart, but that wouldn't work for us as we have some expensive, low margin products a la iPhone on which you can't just give a couple percent discount. We will just have some ugly prices, but didn't really think much about this yet. Perhaps we will add something to round the prices to the nearest ,49 or ,99 cents

5

Btw not sure if you have thought about it, but I have some concerns about the legality of your solution. It's not allowed anymore to price differientiate based on country in the EU since about a year, but to me it sounds that it's exactly what you are doing now .

6

Yeah low margin products are a problem. As for price discrimination (which I think you mean?) per country, hmm, well I guess it depends on how you look at it:

Practically speaking, in the end I do exactly the opposite: every consumer customer pays the same on our store, incl. VAT. What is different is the price excl. VAT.

I can't imagine that becoming a problem... on the other hand, not doing this and just adding each countries VAT, will result in price discrimination based on country, right?

7

The difference between the iporting of goods into the EU fromt he UK is that all UK exports now will be zero rated for tax, and it is the import country that levies and collects the tax at the countries rate at point of delivery. b2b

8

Yeah low margin products are a problem. As for price discrimination (which I think you mean?) per country, hmm, well I guess it depends on how you look at it:

Practically speaking, in the end I do exactly the opposite: every consumer customer pays the same on our store, incl. VAT. What is different is the price excl. VAT.

I can't imagine that becoming a problem... on the other hand, not doing this and just adding each countries VAT, will result in price discrimination based on country, right?

Same problem here, each country has its own VAT. End price is the same...

Don't know what else we can do.

9

Hello all,

any news regarding this issue? Do you know if anyone developed an addon for the one stop shop functionality?

10

I'm following this topic too,
I am interested in a solution to this problem

11

Kicking this up. I'm currently considering upgrading our cs-cart to the latest version or switching to another cart completely because I am afraid the tax issues / eu compliancy things like this will never be fixed in cs-cart.

I have been playing around with the demo of the latest version... and one of the big issues I find, for example, is that when having prices incl VAT everything seems to work correctly... but then when a customer is tax exempt, cs-cart charges the amount the product costs incl VAT... just without any included VAT - it should of course reduce the amount with the tax.

Example:

Product costs 100 euro incl 20% vat.

Now tax exempt customer buys it. He pays 100 euro ex vat which should be 83.33

I just can't get my head around these things...

Going for prices EX vat plus added VAT for the customer also doesn't work, because then customers get different prices in each country that has a different VAT rate. So a product would cost 100 euro in Austria (with 20% vat incl) but 99.17 Euro in Germany (with 19% vat included).

This is really driving me insane........

12

Kicking this up. I'm currently considering upgrading our cs-cart to the latest version or switching to another cart completely because I am afraid the tax issues / eu compliancy things like this will ever be fixed in cs-cart.

I have been playing around with the demo of the latest version... and one of the big issues I find, for example, is that when having prices incl VAT everything seems to work correctly... but then when a customer is tax exempt, cs-cart charges the amount the product costs incl VAT... just without any included VAT - it should of course reduce the amount with the tax.

Example:

Product costs 100 euro incl 20% vat.

Now tax exempt customer buys it. He pays 100 euro ex vat which should be 83.33

I just can't get my head around these things...

Going for prices EX vat plus added VAT for the customer also doesn't work, because then customers get different prices in each country that has a different VAT rate. So a product would cost 100 euro in Austria (with 20% vat incl) but 99.17 Euro in Germany (with 19% vat included).

This is really driving me insane........

Im looking at doing the same, having to move carts..... the tax thing now since brexit is worse for me, and now they have removed the ability for variations to give product quantity discounts.
https://forum.cs-cart.com/topic/64786-quantity-discounts-apply-across-variations/?fromsearch=1

I paid CS a lot of money years ago to get this qty discount function added to the product options which they added to the core.

They then decided to remove it ( i think forgot to implement) in the new version .https://prnt.sc/BwLwlJZHwVfD
https://prnt.sc/9GKtxj3tlcGZ

I enquired about it being re added and was told $900 (yes 900) usd by Simtech and they may or may not add it in future releases.

I had it implemeted for 80$ by a developer

Im looking at magento to see if it is suitable, Im sorry to say as I have fought on CS side a long time, this is something I cant do without.

13

Good news: Ivan wrote me an email and they are working on EU stuff and expect to launch it in June,. I asked him to post back here, also about your topic, John :)

BTW: I would not go the Magento route if I were you. There are really better, easier options out there. But let's hope we don't need to switch at all :)

14

As Flow mentioned, CS-Cart 4.15.1 — which, by my preliminary estimation, should release this June — will include EU-related improvements. The improvements themselves are in the works, but we're looking into the following things:

- Subtracting tax from a price that includes in when the customer is tax exempt.

- Ability to request consent for specific types of cookies, rather than "everything or nothing".

- Ability to show price per unit (milliliter/kilogram, etc.) next to product price.

- Ability to show energy efficiency labels (though a special type of product feature, most likely).

- Ability for vendors in Multi-Vendor to specify the information necessary for imprint by default, and show it in documents.

---

As for the issue that John mentioned (this one is not related to EU), there was an answer in Help Desk, but I can go in a little more detail about how or why it happened.

The setting originally existed for options (and therefore, for option combinations, before variations were even a thing). It still exists and works for options. We may remove the [Deprecated] part, because options still need this functionality.

It used to work for product variations before version 4.10.1 as well, because they were based on product options.

Starting with version 4.10.1, product variations are based on product features. This has allowed us to significantly improve variations: add filtering, simplify import, and allow you set prices on variations directly, not through option modifiers. That functionality was very requested back in the day, on the forum and through Help Desk alike.

But because new variations aren't based on options, the old setting (called "Disregard product options when calculating quantity discount") no longer applies to variations. It has been that way since 2019, and this topic from a month ago was the first complaint I found. John also contacted us though Help Desk, so Customer Care did forward it to the developers for consideration.

We understand how it could be useful, so we'll look into the ability to let different variations contribute to the quantity eligible for discount. If we can, we'll add it in 4.15.1. But I can't guarantee it 100% just yet, because it will depend on technical complexity.

---

P.S. Also, John's post might have given the idea that CS-Cart and Simtech Development are the same company. So I just just have to clarify it and say that we're not. :) CS-Cart and Simtech Development are independent from each other.

- CS-Cart team develops CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor. That includes the current and future built-in add-ons. When you request something that is not there by default, we take note. But the idea is to solve the problem promplty, and we can not promise to implement everything requested as soon as possible. So, if there is an affordable third-party solution in our marketplace that can address the issue right now, we tell you about it. If there is no solution yet, we suggest a third-party developer.

- Simtech Development is a company that does custom work on CS-Cart and develops some of the third-party add-ons available in our marketplace.

So, the promise to consider it for future versions came from CS-Cart Customer Care, whereas the quote came from Simtech Development.

15

give us about v5 info , where we can test closed/open beta ?

16

Im looking at doing the same, having to move carts..... the tax thing now since brexit is worse for me, and now they have removed the ability for variations to give product quantity discounts.
https://forum.cs-cart.com/topic/64786-quantity-discounts-apply-across-variations/?fromsearch=1

I paid CS a lot of money years ago to get this qty discount function added to the product options which they added to the core.

They then decided to remove it ( i think forgot to implement) in the new version .https://prnt.sc/BwLwlJZHwVfD
https://prnt.sc/9GKtxj3tlcGZ

I enquired about it being re added and was told $900 (yes 900) usd by Simtech and they may or may not add it in future releases.

I had it implemeted for 80$ by a developer

Im looking at magento to see if it is suitable, Im sorry to say as I have fought on CS side a long time, this is something I cant do without.

Magento is not the way to go. Surely its very extendable, but it is also a very big pain to maintain. Additionally, it has had numerous SQL injection vulnerabilities over the years. So unless you have the money to continuously hire developers to update it for you, you will be out of luck.


give us about v5 info , where we can test closed/open beta ?

What other info do you want. They posted a video listing all the things they were working on and even a roadmap?

17

Thanks for the info on Magento Guys, yes preliminary enquiries seems it not right for us

The reason we looked at magento is we reply quite a lot on "alt teams product deisgner" software which is also ready made for magento.

There are other solutions though, but the news about june is good :)

18

I had it implemeted for 80$ by a developer

can share it or the developer info? need that as well

Im looking at doing the same, having to move carts..... the tax thing now since brexit is worse for me, and now they have removed the ability for variations to give product quantity discounts.
https://forum.cs-cart.com/topic/64786-quantity-discounts-apply-across-variations/?fromsearch=1

I paid CS a lot of money years ago to get this qty discount function added to the product options which they added to the core.

They then decided to remove it ( i think forgot to implement) in the new version .https://prnt.sc/BwLwlJZHwVfD
https://prnt.sc/9GKtxj3tlcGZ

I enquired about it being re added and was told $900 (yes 900) usd by Simtech and they may or may not add it in future releases.

I had it implemeted for 80$ by a developer

Im looking at magento to see if it is suitable, Im sorry to say as I have fought on CS side a long time, this is something I cant do without.

19

I had it implemeted for 80$ by a developer
can share it or the developer info? need that as well


We took note of this request. This has been developed already, and will be included in CS-Cart 4.15.1 by default. Here are the details:

In 4.15.1, the Product Variations add-on will offer a setting that'll allow you to apply quantity discounts to all variations of the same product. With that setting, "green M T-shirt" and "blue L T-shirt" will count as a single variation for the purposes of quantity discounts.

The setting will affect both "variations as separate products" and "variations as a single product".

20

Magento is not the way to go. Surely its very extendable, but it is also a very big pain to maintain. Additionally, it has had numerous SQL injection vulnerabilities over the years. So unless you have the money to continuously hire developers to update it for you, you will be out of luck.


What other info do you want. They posted a video listing all the things they were working on and even a roadmap?

where is the video ?