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.

[Candi_Q]

Hi @GuyWilliams 

It really is a mess. I hope you get some clear answers soon!

[RyanEngland]

Hi guys,

If we were to build a plugin that integrates Taxamo with your Shopify store, whereby you're able to just input your Taxamo details and have it automatically integrate with the Taxamo system would this be of interest to anyone?

We'd probably have to charge $5 / month or something similar to cover our development costs - separate to the costs form Taxamo. Would this be of interest to anyone?

Cheers,

Ryan

[HelenRound]

Yes, definitely! ASAP please!!

[HelenRound]

Yes, definitely! ASAP please!! 

[Dbaca]

Crossborderit has a functioning app as well. It is free and included in our services. Feel free to reachout at info@crossborderit.com.

[KBTTPS]

YES!!!! That would be amazing...

[caratech]

We'll be interested in this solution to use our already registered Taxamo service.

Kind regards,

Robert

[GuyWilliams]

RyanEngland 

Good luck with that.  Taxamo has *extremely* strict requirements and won't use Shopify/Avalara data for tax calculation *or* display.  Also, as currently built, it doesn't work at all with discounts (although that's coming).  I've been deep deep down this development rabbit hole.  Happy to chat if you'd like (PM me) but don't get it in your head that you are just going to pull Shopify/Avalara tax data (which is easy and what CBIT does).  It's a non-starter for Taxamo for compliance/liability reasons (their legal interpretation of compliance differs greatly from CBIT's- I'm not going to opine on that but Taxamo is very firm on it).  

[Morning]

That’s because Taxamo are a ‘deemed supplier’ like EBay or Etsy rather than an Intermediary. If the VAT collected isn’t right, only Taxamo are liable. Do they have a method of recouping under-collected VAT from their sellers?

Speaking of incorrect VAT amounts, I got a reply from the Swedish Tax agency. They confirmed the VAT must be collected on goods and shipping for IOSS consignments, as expected. Crossborderit are registered through Sweden, so I guess we're getting different advice. Weird huh.

[GuyWilliams]

"That’s because Taxamo are a ‘deemed supplier’ like EBay or Etsy rather than an Intermediary. If the VAT collected isn’t right, only Taxamo are liable. Do they have a method of recouping under-collected VAT from their sellers?"

Ohhh that's super interesting and makes a lot of sense.  Taxamo only collects and remits VAT based on *their* calculation of the liability but that calculation is based on store entered HTS information in the product config... so, yes, a store could deliberately enter advantageous HTS codes and leave Taxamo liable- but their vendor agreement is pretty substantial so I'm sure that they have the ability to charge the credit card on file or otherwise go after the store for a liability.  On the shipping- I haven't run into that but nor do I charge shipping (so there is nothing to tax).

CBIT seems like it has a bunch of internal risk- it's fully dependent on *store* data, not it's own, that means that it's basically remitting "on trust."  Ask yourself, "how many SMB Shopify stores would I fully "trust?"  Their app helps a lot but bad data in is still bad data.  That would keep me up at night.  But they are moving fast and are easy to work with, so good job guys, hope that it doesn't blow up on you!

[Morning]

Ah wait, it was a different thread where I was arguing with the CBIT guy about VAT on shipping.

[Dbaca]

Yes if people have you IOSS they can ship causing the VAT responsibility to shit to Crossborderit and to the customer.

[Dbaca]

I appreciate the post. Yes we are doing it differently but are close to the tax authorities and making sure that we are mitigating risk. Our public app will be available in five business days. We are an automated service so we hope to get most people on the app and API which reports clean data.

[SZeng]

I totally agree with you Amanda. Smaller shops that are not Shopify Plus stores would benefit from this, but is only available to Shopify Plus stores that presumably have enough orders going to the EU to warrant having their own IOSS number. 

[EvaGH1]

YES, please!! 

[Anikka_Burton]

Morning!

I am late to this thread and just trying to get the gist! And I would be SO grateful for some help.

Prior to Brexit we sold about 20% of our business to Europe. 

Prior to 01 July I ended up switching off shipping to Europe as people were being charged massive amounts, despite the value of the package being under the threshold value. For example, I had a large corporate order to Ireland. The packages were worth about £17 and they were all charged about £40 to receive the packages! The company were really pissed off and I ended up covering all of the charges and making a massive loss. The commodity codes and costs were all correct on the customs invoices.

So I switched our European shipping off.

I desperately want to reinstate it on my site, but more pressingly, I have a large corporate order who want to confirm, but it includes 300+ parcels to Europe and I am worried about confirming it with them and then it turning into a nightmare.

We are registered with Crossborderit, but I see here that people have had problems with them too! Agh! 

What an absolute mess this is! So frustrating!

I'd love to join your thread please! And if anyone has any advice, I would be ever so grateful.

[Nitsa]

Not very helpful I know but yesterday I was speaking to the operations manager of a UK courier company about the situation in the EU and he referred to it as carnage. Overflowing warehouses and mountains of paperwork. One factor that was pointed out to me was that even if I had completed the paperwork correctly there were countless others who had not done so and that was causing immense problems. Personally, while I might be prepared to take the chance of the odd package the idea of 300+ packages to the EU at this time would be a nightmare I wouldn't even want to contemplate!

[lukehastorun]

Has anybody heard from CBIT regarding billing and the actual VAT filing dates etc. We've had our account for over a month now and the IOSS requirement is to file VAT on a monthly basis but we haven't had anything from CBIT so far plus no replies from the support.

[LauraECY]

I had an email today notifying me of errors in the upload but that is all.

[Dbaca]

We have the first filing actually at the end of August. So we working hard to get all shipments reported so billing can go out to everyone. Our app is in review and will fix this issue we are hoping it is approved in the next few days. This will allow us to pull all shipments and finalize things.
We are just waiting on Shopify at the moment. You are free to contact me or my customer service group at info@crossborderit.com if you have specific questions.