So as a sole seller (no employees) of digital products located in California, US…I understand that I need to still charge VAT for EU countries. But there is one thing that isn’t clear when setting this up and turning it on in the shopify settings.
Ive enabled the ‘Charge Vat on Digital Goods’ in the tax settings and Shopify Auto created a collection called 'Digital Goods VAT tax", and I then assigned all my digital products to that specific VAT collection as shown in all the shopify help pages. Under Settings> Taxes> Charge VAT on Digital Goods section, it gives you the option to ‘change/assign collection’, and it is currently that collection (Digital Goods VAT tax) assigned to it.
But what Im now questioning is, do i need to make this newly created ‘Digital Goods VAT tax’ collection a shopable collection in my stores navigation in order for it to charge VAT? Do people in EU need to actually navigate to this collection and select products from this collection in order for it to charge VAT to them?
I have may main collection of products in my stores navigation, but its not a “manual collection” and is auto-populated by logic conditions (If product title contains = ). So when I go into the Settings> Taxes> Charge VAT on Digital Goods section and want to use this collection as the the one that is tied to the VAT calculations, its not there to select because its not a manual collection?
I’m so confused…
Actually, nevermind. Its not worth the hassle to get this working. I just installed an App to block countries that are in the EU
Well before discussing VAT on digital goods in Shopify - a couple of words on the EU taxation in general. In your case (digital goods ) you can not apply IOSS specail VAT scheme - you have to use Non-Union OSS scheme (only applicable to digital goods). If in additin to digital goods you sell also physical goods - you are up to Non-Union OSS plus IOSS. Shopify in principle does not support such combination. We are a Fintech comapny from Finland , we have Shopify clients in US who sell both vinils/cds and downloadable items with our EU compalience solution. Do give us a call , we can set up your store to work both with digital and physical goods. We do not have monthly charges , so it is pay-as-you-go and we will provide free registration to the EU VAT special schemes. You can easily schedule a meet with us : https://meetings.hubspot.com/robert662/30-min-demo )
Here is the link to our Shopify application: https://apps.shopify.com/eas-eu-compliance
Rostislav , EAS project Oy, Helsinki
Have you found the new Shopify Tax update has broken VAT collection in the EU? We were collecting using the OSS registration since july 2023 but since November 2024 we’ve found VAT collection has stopped. Shopify insist we need to be registered with the IOSS system but that is for physical products not digital right? I feel shopify has broken VAT collection for us digital merchants.
HI Antony,
The rules have changed indeed. Do enable IOSS (you od not need really to have IOSS number for that , input any number there) and then the calculation for downloadable products will work automatically. Since you have no physical goods you need not worry about having set up IOSS in your store. We have to play by Shopify’s rules 
Awesome, thank you for the tip. Shopify support has been completely useless and condescending.
I’ll give it a try.
Happy holidays.
It seems i can’t enable IOSS with OSS enabled… And I can’t un-enable OSS… gah!
IOSS+ OSS does not work in Shopify , but it does not mean that you cannot have it set up properly .I understand that you sell only downloadable goods from outside of EU ? If so, then switch off Shopifty tax (downgrade to Basic tax) and it should be possible. If you are unable to do it for some reason , write to me here info@easproject.com and I will help you further
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