Tax exemption for Canary Islands with the new Shopify Taxes Setup

djimi
Shopify Partner
1 0 5

Hello warriors! I hope everyone is doing well.

I want to ask you for your help. I am trying to set up a store in Spain. Now VAT in Spain is 21%, which is set automatically when by inserting my VAT No.  and setting up the Tax Collections in Shopify admin settings.

But do you happen to know how to configure your tax settings for the IVA/VAT exemption for the Canary Islands? The provinces of Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla are excluded from the European Community VAT territories and therefore are tax-exempt; consequently, charge 0% tax when selling to these provinces from Spain or other EU countries. 

Your help is much appreciated! 

Replies 20 (20)

raulmellinas
Visitor
2 0 2

Hi! I have the same problem and Shopify's support don't answer my emails.

I'm really worried about this. If anyone could help me I would be grateful.

Thank you!

Pieter-Jan_Copp
Tourist
3 0 2

Having exactly the same issue. And Shopify support is just deflecting this problem as "This is not our problem"

capocopa
Excursionist
12 1 18

This issue has also another problem....
Calculated shipping costs by app or courier doesn't work for Canary Islands because in EVERY courier database those islands are not managed as "Spain" like in Shopify...
if you order and set as address Tenerife for example, the system won't find any tariffs because in every courier system that address is in another country: Canary Islands and not Spain.

Fixing the issue could be very very very simple if only Shopify would... and i don't understand why leaving things like this that are CLEARLY WRONG...

i emailed them this morning too.. they should just:

1- Remove "Las Palmas" and "Santa Cruz de Tenerife" from Spain provinces
2- Create another country called "Canary Islands" using their country code "IC"

in this way Shopify could fix 2 problems:

1- Correct VAT % for Canary Islands THAT IS NOT 21% like in Spain... (actually Shopify put Spanish vat on all Canary Islands because they are just a Spanish province)
2- Fix calculated shipping cost by app or courier... actually the system check the cost using a Spanish address... but on every courier system Tenerife IS NOT IN SPAIN.. BUT IN CANARY ISLANDS country code "IC"

it could be so easy to fix this....
i opened chat with support but they are total unwilling to do help/do nothing... not only... it's looked like the support neither know shopify settings.. very disappointing..
they suggested me to disable those province from selling... are they serious? this is the way they fix things? by disabling??
i'm not requesting a special feature...
please keep reporting this to shopify support all together... more requests, more chances to fix this

abastida
Tourist
3 0 1

Same issue here! 

KGG
Tourist
9 0 4

Hi! Did someone find a solution for this?

capocopa
Excursionist
12 1 18

2you can't solve this...

you can only: treat all Spain as 0% VAT or treat all Spain as 21% VAT

shopify is unwilling to fix this by creating another country (Canary Islands) for those provinces... their reply was like "you can do shopify plus to fix this"

same problem is for USA associated states (micronesia, palau, marshall islands, american samoa, guam, northern mariana islands, puerto rico, us virgin islands).. they should remove them from USA and create a separate country for each of them... this will fix also a lot of secondary things with integration with couriers like preview of shipping costs and waybill creation

the only way to fix this is pushing shopify to consider this solution....

on all others ecommerce software this is as i described

fluga_seller
Tourist
8 0 3

Has anybody found a solution to this? 

Since 1st of July the Eu is listed as one which makes it impossible to edit regions in spain... 

Any tips?

KGG
Tourist
9 0 4

Nope.

I just don't send there.

You can make orders manually, applying a discount for the taxes and putting on the notes "The invoice does not include VAT due to article 21 of Law 37/1992" and / or indicate that "the operation is exempt (article 6.1.j) of Royal Decree 1619/2012, of November 30."

joshua29
Tourist
3 0 2

did some one find the solution.

fluga_seller
Tourist
8 0 3

Only option I have found is to write a disclaimer that the customer has to reach out and then do a draft order and set tax to 0...

 

This is of course killing conversion but it's the only way I guess since Europe is now treated like a whole and there are no ways of doing tax overrrides that works?

 

/p

Vidalibros
Visitor
1 0 0

Agreed this is a real issue not just at customer experience level, but also down the line for accounting.

One idea is to ask customers from those areas to set up an account, and then at customer level mark this customer as : Not collecting tax.

This is not a waterproof solution as it will cause issues if customer decides to ship something to Barcelona (tax exempt status is based on customer billing address not shipping address).

Also this fix may not help with the customer's first order.

Hope this helps some of you, staying tuned to other replies for a more waterproof fix.

vpernes
Visitor
1 0 1

Attention to all admins using scripts for reducing VAT for Spanish regions:

Shopify is starting to implement zero VAT for these regions. As of 12 NOV 2021, out of four, two are VAT compliant.

This means that unsupervised scripts giving 21% back for ZIP codes starting with 35, 38, 51, 52 need to be fixed until all regions are done.

As there isn't a clear timeframe when all the regions will be compliant, having both Shopify's fix and a script will generate double price reductions.

Regions implemented: Melilla and Ceuta.

Pending: Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas.

KGG
Tourist
9 0 4

Hi!

 

Do u have a link to the article?

Robertobursan
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi,

 

This sounds great, I want to know more about this shopify fix.

mommyssoap
Visitor
1 0 0

They do not solve this issue so far, and 1 year passed by... I'm not too optimistic they are going to fix it up, if anyone has any idea it would be more than welcome

 

Pieter-Jan_Copp
Tourist
3 0 2

This has been indeed a long standing issue! And it seems it is NOT only the Canary Islands where this forms a problem. 

VesnaLashes
Tourist
5 0 1

I see it's been years since this post. shopify still isn't helpful.

 

Altium123
Visitor
1 0 0

Same issue here. Cannot find a way to remove VAT from items nor shipping costs for Canary Islands.

This is going to be a nightmare fixing accounting every quarter.

VesnaLashes
Tourist
5 0 1
We fixed it. Apparently Shopify has some older version available where you can manually select tax for each area of shipping. So now I have posted prices without IGIC and in the end the tax is added for clients from Canaries ans not added for everybody else. But you could even charge IVA if you wanted.

Rollbrettfahrer
Shopify Partner
1 0 2

2024 and this still seems not to be fixed? I want to migrate a shop to Shopify that is located in the Canary Islands. 7% tax within the Canaries and 0% for orders that go to the rest of Spainn or anywhere else. Do I really have to use another shop software, because Shopify cannot split Spain into several regions?