How to stop automatic shipping taxes on EU postal services?

[Olaf2]

Hi all,

We are EU-based business and use the Dutch national postal service (PostNL) for shipping our goods to customers worldwide. Because PostNL is the designated national postal service all postal shipments are tax exempted. I could image similar rules apply to national postal services in other EU countries.

However, according to this article Shopify automatically calculates and adds VAT to the shipping cost. 

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/shipping-tax

The argument made is that collecting taxes on shipping cost is mandatory, however I believe this is incorrect. From tax perspective there is a distinction between postal shipments (including postal package) which are delivered through the letterbox and express/freight shipments -- the latter being VAT applicable indeed.

For business like ours, that sell products that can be delivered through the letterbox, this means we are collecting more taxes than required by law. This of course illegal and makes our products needlessly expensive to customers.

Here is a statement on the website of the Dutch Tax Authority (sorry, Dutch only):

https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/belastingdienst/zakelijk/btw/tarieven_en....

I apologize if I am mistaken, but otherwise I would want Shopify to stop automatically add shipping tax.

Thank you.

Olaf

[Rostislav · Accepted solution]

Hi Olaf , 

I already discussed this topic here Solved: No tax on shipping, please - Shopify Community

You have to differentiate between your input VAT (what is charged to you by Danish post) and the output VAT (what you charge to the customers).

And Dutch is always funny to read 🙂