Feature Request: Integration of Taxamo assure into the checkout for UK companies selling to EU

[amanda_drury]

I'm not sure how to put in a features request - please can someone tell me if this way doesn't work.

I have been looking into how as a small business I can improve the experience for my EU customers of purchasing from myself, post Brexit as a UK business.

Royal Mail have recommended a company called Taxamo assure which acts as a IOSS. They calculate and charge the customer VAT and pay it to the EU on our behalf without us having to fill in the VAT return. They charge £2 for each transaction. It sounds like the perfect solution but unless you are a shopify plus business one cannot get access to the Shopify checkout and do the API integration. The irony is if you are a shopify plus customer you will be big enough and it will be more cost effective to set up your own IOSS.

I have spoken to support about this who have suggested that I put in a feature request. So here it is. If more people can also express an interest in this feature it may have more chance of being implemented and go somewhere to ease the Brexit headache of doing business with the EU.

[Morning]

That tallies with Click & Drop being updated on the 22nd. The IOSS number shouldn't be visible on the address label or CN22 label though. Unless it's the number of an online marketplace like Ebay or Amazon, it needs to be kept secret.

[Boo14]

Thanks. That's interesting. It was auto-printing out on our first few labels since 1st July. That must be why they have switched to the symbol! I will let our other despatch unit know!

[LauraECY]

That is really good to know thanks. Do you know why it has to be secret? Is
it to avoid others getting hold of the number to use fraudulently? I
assumed it was similar to the VAT no which is quite public.

[Morning]

It needs to be secret because otherwise anyone could use it for a package, and that owner of that number would have to pay the VAT.

One of the July 22nd C&D updates was to stop the number appearing on the labels, as it had been in certain cases.

[Candi_Q]

Hi All,

I had success with my delivery of a parcel to an Irish customer. It took a bit longer than usual to arrive but when it did there was no additional charges to the customer and I can confirm the IOSS symbol was present on my Click and Drop postage label.

So is there a trend with particular European countries that are having issues with double VAT charges?

Also is anyone else being completely ignored by Crossborderit? I applied for my IOSS number through them and it shows up in my Crossborderit account but I have been emailing for weeks and not had a single response! I am unable to upload my CSV file (constant error response) and I have requested the Private app link but hae not received it. Not sure how I am supposed to upload the VAT data as requested by Crossborderit at this point.

[Nitsa]

Has anyone scanned the QR code to see if it appears there? The "kept secret" bit bothers me, how would EU customs know it's a genuine IOSS label otherwise?

[Morning]

It's not in the QR code, it's in the electronic data that precedes a package arriving in the EU. The number is checked by customs against the EU-wide database. If it's valid, if the package value isn't over 150 euro, and it doesn't contain excise goods, the package will be released from customs for delivery.

Edit: Removed a bit about online marketplace numbers as I don't think it was correct.

[Candi_Q]

Can anyone share a screenshot of how they have their CSV files set up and have successfully uploaded to Crossborderit?

Thanks in advance!

[Dbaca]

If you are reporting manually and have not reported the shipment just do not include it in the report into our system. This gets more difficult the more automated this comes. Please make sure to call the carriers and complain because we need the systems to work this is new to them so they need to know where the holes are. If you ship with an IOSS number the carriers should know to not charge VAT.

[LauraECY]

The support address is not very responsive but Damon has been quite helpful.

It took a lot of playing around with the format to get it to upload accurately. I have to admit I was hoping that we would have the private app this week so that I don't have to do another manual upload. 
I finally got it to work by creating the table and then concatenating the values with ; in between each value. I then copied the values only into a separate file and saved that as a CSV file. There was an issue with the date format not pulling through properly as it looks like a sum but if you have ' before the date it should. (Apologies if any of this is teaching to suck eggs!)

[LauraECY]

I got a response from Royal Mail saying that I had done everything correctly and so it was an issue with the tax authorities in the countries. I have had a holding email from the Austrian tax people saying they are looking into it. I haven't had any documentation from the other affected order so will leave that one as it is. 

[Candi_Q]

Hi @LauraECY 

This is so helpful thank you! I just learned a new word 'Concatenating' lol.  I will give it a go now.

In addition to the IOSS file did you upload a product file as mentioned in Crossborderit's FAQ section?

Thanks 🙂 

[LauraECY]

Our product catalogue is enormous so we haven't done so. If it turns out
that we need to then I will but for now I am focussing on having the orders
in!

[LauraECY]

Just a quick FYI - I had the date format wrong. I'm sure you will spot this when you upload but the format needs to be yyyy-mm-dd

[Candi_Q]

Hi @LauraECY ,

Yes thank you. After a bit of fiddling it is finally uploaded successfully. Thank you for your help! If you didn't send that screenshot I would still be completely lost. You're a star!

[SMU]

Hi

Is the IOSS symbol generated automatically if we enter our IOSS number  on click and drop? Sorry, I may have missed this info earlier in the thread.

[Candi_Q]

Hi @SMU 

Yes if you enter your IOSS number into your Click and Drop account under the setting section called 'Trading Names' it should automatically print an IOSS symbol on your postage labels. I would recommend checking each label to confirm as some people on here have mentioned it not showing up on some occasions. 

[GuyWilliams]

Has anyone run into trouble with 0,00 EUR transactions?  We ship ~5-10 replacement units a day at no cost to the customer and since pre July 1 they were under the 22 EUR threshold they just went DDU.  A twist in IOSS is that it's not just collecting VAT, it's collecting duty (HTS) as well so even a 0 EUR item still has underlying "value" that could be dutiable.  What's happening is that neither Taxamo nor CBIT (we use both... long story) can process IOSS for a 0 EUR transaction so the orders ship DDU and some customers are getting charged really high amounts and getting justifiably annoyed (remember this was already a customer with a problem!)  What are we supposed to do in this scenario?

[Candi_Q]

Hi @GuyWilliams 

Is it possible to just send it as a commercial sample?

[GuyWilliams]

@Candi_Q Sure, that's OK for one's and twos but it's probably not compliant- it's not actually a sample after all.  Fact is, our 3PL tells us that no one is really sure what is (or is not) compliant so maybe I'll just go ahead and do it.  What a mess