How can I set up EU VAT based on customer location in my store?

Accounting & Taxes
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Topic summary

An EU-based merchant wants to configure their store to display VAT-inclusive prices that automatically adjust based on customer location, with prices excluding VAT for non-EU customers and tax-exempt business buyers.

Current Challenge:
The store currently adds VAT only at checkout after customers enter billing/shipping information. The merchant needs prices to reflect correct VAT rates before checkout, ideally triggered by a country selection popup.

Recommended Solution:
Enable Shopify’s dynamic tax-inclusive pricing feature combined with the option to “include or exclude taxes based on customer’s location.” This should automatically adjust displayed prices to include the appropriate VAT rate for each EU country while showing tax-exclusive prices to non-EU customers.

Additional Options:

  • Test the setup using VPN or by sharing the site with customers in different countries
  • Contact Shopify support directly for account-specific configuration assistance
  • For B2B VAT exemption functionality, consider the “OO EU Tax Exemption” app, which allows business customers to validate their VAT ID and automatically receive tax-exempt pricing

Ongoing Issue:
One user reports the feature works for international markets but not for their home country (Spain), where local customers still see tax added only at checkout rather than on product pages.

Summarized with AI on October 31. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello everyone,

I read all the support documents, but I feel like I still cannot figure how to set the store in this particular fashion.

We are business based in EU.

  1. I want to set prices in my store without the EU VAT

  2. When customer comes to our store, it is prompted to confirm their country.

  3. They will see the prices with VAT included, based on their specific location (different EU countries have different VAT, we use OSS).

4: Ideally, if they are logged in and marked as “tax exempt”, they will see the prices without VAT.

Is this possible?
Thank you.

2

Any help?

3

Hi @jonas2323 ,

Thank you for reaching out. Can you tell me why you want your product prices to exclude VAT by default? Is this because you sell outside of the EU and want non-EU customers to view these tax-exclusive prices, or is it that you want EU customers to only view your product prices with the appropriate amount of VAT added?

Either way, I would recommend looking into enabling dynamic tax-inclusive pricing. This feature allows your product prices to automatically updated to reflect the rate of tax based on the customer’s location. If you choose to exclude taxes from your product prices and turn on the option to include or exclude taxes based on the customer’s location, then prices will show as tax-exclusive for your home region but inclusive for other regions of the EU. If you enable product prices to include taxes then prices will include VAT for all EU regions, including your own, but should adjust for the customer’s location.

I hope this helps but please let me know if you have questions.

4

Thank you for your reply. I don’t want to exclude taxes by default — I just want to be sure everyone is shown the right price — including the non EU customers, who shall see the price without VAT.

At the moment we use a form of dynamic tax-inclusive pricing, but it only adds the VAT during checkout when customers enter their billing and shipping info. I need to be able to show them the correct price before checkout — hence my question regarding the custom popup with specifying country of the buyer.

5

Hi @jonas2323 ,

Right, I see. The understanding I have from reading our documentation is that if you enable both the option to include sales taxes in product prices and the option to include or exclude taxes based on the customer’s location, the prices will include VAT and should adjust based on which country the customer is based in. You could test this by sharing your site with someone in another country to see if the prices change accordingly, or yourself if you’re using a VPN.

If you’re still having issues getting things working the way you want, I’d recommend contacting our support team directly. They can authenticate you on your account and look into getting this working for you, and if necessary, this can be escalated to our taxes team for review who will be able to confirm if what you’re looking to do here is possible.

6

If you want to sell B2B to other EU countries and want to be able to do tax exemption. I highly recommend trying OO EU Tax exemption. See: https://apps.shopify.com/oo-eu-tax-exemption customers can fill in and validate their VAT ID themselves and TAX is automatically exempted from the order.

7

Hi @jonas2323 , I do not think this fully solves your questions but you might want to sell B2B to other EU countries and want to be able to do VAT exemption. If so I highly recommend trying OO EU Tax exemption. See: https://apps.shopify.com/oo-eu-tax-exemption customers can fill in and validate their VAT ID themselves in the checkout and VAT is automatically exempted from the order.

8

Victor,
Do you know how to include taxes for products both for local clients and for other markets clients?
For example we are the company from Spain and we expect the client from Spain sees the price of products (100eur) on product page as 100 + 21% = 121, but the client from France should sees the same product with price 100+20% = 120.

Now it works only for other markets. It means that the customer from France sees the same price of 120 euros on the product and the checkout page, but the client from Spain sees on the product page 100 eur and checkout stage he receives additional VAT and sees the correct price of 121 only on checkout page!