VAT rates in Europe

[fm_vlv]

Hi, with our new shop, we'd like to sell all over Europe. Almost each country has two, sometimes three different VAT rates. How do I tell Shopify to use the right VAT rate upon checkout (i.e. reduced rate instead of regular rate)? In other words, where can I tell Shopify to use a reduced rate instead of the regular rate for a certain product. Is the manual overwrite function really the only way to do it? Is there a list of VAT rates Shopify takes as basis available?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Elias]

Hi, @fm_vlv.

Thank you for reaching out and posting this question!

Due to the varying regulations between countries and states, we're unable to provide this level of legal tax advice. Instead, we'd recommend consulting with local tax authorities or a tax professional to verify that you charge your customers the correct tax rates, and to ensure that you file and remit your taxes correctly. However, we do have the following resources that can help you get set up with VAT and country-specific registrations. 

• Registration-based taxes in the EU
• Setting up EU taxes

If you have any other questions on this topic, then don't hesitate to let us know!

[fm_vlv]

Hi Elias,

thanks for your reply. Though this is not quite what I meant. Here's an example: I'd like to sell product XYZ in Germany. Shopify automatically calculates the customer's price with the standard VAT rate (which is 19%). The product in my example is foodstuff and therefore subject to a reduced VAT rate (of 7%). Hence, upon checkout Shopify should calculate the customer's price with a VAT rate of 7% and not 19%. I understand a manual tax overwrite within Shopify settings is the "standard way" to make the necessary adjustments, but is it really the only way?

Other remark: It seems that it is currently impossible to apply a manual tax overwrite to an automatically generated collection (only manually created collections appear in the corresponding list of collections for the manual tax overwrite). Would be great to enable shop owners to also choose from their automatically generated collections.

Thanks in advance!

[Erin]

Hi, @fm_vlv. I'm happy to pass on your feedback. As you've mentioned a manual tax override would be the way to set this up in Shopify currently. You can learn more about setting up tax overrides and exemptions here.