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.

[Hermine_Makangu]

This is so important i need Taxamo too. 

I had contacted taxamo over the whole month of June. But i found that after i set up an account with them they did reply to me saying that i needed a developer.

We are VAT registered and have distributers in France who are also VAT registered but the IOSS is changing the filing from the quarterly to the monthly which my distributers do not want to be an intermediary for.

I am so shocked that Paypal, Stripe or Paypal themselves have not thought of an alternative to help their customers.

[LauraECY]

Hi all,

A quick update on where we are up to.

Having the "Registration based Taxes" authorised gave me the correct settings for collecting tax on EU orders below 150EUR. I entered our IOSS number provided by CrossBorderIT and tested a few addresses in our drafts. The taxes appear to be being applied correctly. I will be attempting to upload a couple of orders to CBIT this morning. 

We have also realised that we can't continue to use the Post Office Drop and Go service as they have no way of processing IOSS post, so have had to set up Click and Drop with Royal Mail instead. 

It does feel like we are making progress!

[prispuddings]

Hi

How do you add in reduced rated taxes for some EU countries. These will be country specific.

[Nitsa]

Hi,

I would be really surprised if this is the case for non Shopify Plus stores. (Adding Taxamo) Shopify are notorious for keeping their checkout "locked down" and when I spoke to PayPal about this a while back they weren't optimistic at all about it. Lots of options including Taxamo on Woo Commerce stores but as always, UK/EU stores always appear to be a sideshow to Shopify, I'm daily fielding emails from customers in Channel Islands or IOM being told that their postcode is not a UK postcode and they can't place an order.

[Anikka_Burton]

I've literally been banging my head against a brick wall trying to get this sorted. I didn't realise it wasn't actually possible yet!

I'm all signed up to Taxamo. Is there a way to use their services and manually entering the information until we get some sort of integration?

Thank you.

[Candi_Q]

Hi @LauraECY 

How has the exporting to Crossborderit gone? I am considering this option.

It seems the only potential solution for Taxamo is to pay a shopify expert to integrate it. I imagine this won't be cheap. 

[LauraECY]

So far so good! There were some teething issues with the data upload and I
am hoping they will improve the guidance information as it is quite
confusing.
The key thing is to make sure your Shopify store is set up for Registration
based taxes. There was a bit of confusion with Shopify Support when I asked
to set this up but we got there eventually.

Other considerations are how you send your parcels as I think I mentioned
the Post Office Drop and Go service does not support IOSS shipments. We
have moved to the Royal Mail Click and Drop service to ensure electronic
customs data can be included.

Our only other issue with the process is that we are manually creating
Commercial Invoices for each order. There will be ways to automate this but
we can't justify the outlay at this point.

Now we are just waiting to hear what happens when parcels enter the EU and
if any handling charges are applied!

[Candi_Q]

Hi @LauraECY 

Thank you for your quick response!

Okay, sounds pretty good so far.

I am already on Royal Mail Click and Drop but just doing pay as you go. Hopefully this won't be a problem.

I thought commercial invoices were optional but I will look into doing this as never done one before.

Seems like this is the only viable option for a brand new and very small business.

Thanks again and I hope it goes smoothly for you!

Candice

[Boo14]

Thanks for your updates, Laura. They have been very helpful! I have just uploaded our IOSS number from CBIT today and am on a 'chat' with Shopify at the moment to make sure that all is set up correctly. Having read your latest message, it looks as though we are going to have to change from Drop and Go, too! I will have to look into this now. Good luck, everyone!

[OtwayOrford]

Hello Amanda,

I would very much like to support your Feature Request as it seems to be the only way to escape the Catch 22 of IOSS as a small e comm player selling from the UK to the EU.

Thanks

Mark

Otway & Orford

www.otwayorford.co.uk

[Hermine_Makangu]

Update

I had contacted Taxamo also but I could not link it with my checkout. Taxamo is €2 per transactions

I have found an interim option Crossborderit. Their IOSS registration is €19.99 per month plus €1 per transaction and they do the submition monthly on your behalf. It took only 1 working day for them to get back to me with the IOSS number. Their plan is for a minimum of 3 months. 

The other option, i found was shipping with SAMOS they offer a great price if you are shipping multiple parcels per week. They are flexible for those who do not have an IOSS. They will still need to collect VAT from the sale.

As a result to be compliant we needed a VAT number, an EORI number and now an IOSS number. I relly hope everyone finds a solution to suits their needs.

[Dbaca]

Crossborderit will have a Shopify app for customers very soon. We will roll it out to all users after that but will begin with our current customers. 

[OtwayOrford]

Hermine,

Thanks very much for that, very kind of you.

Best

Mark

[OtwayOrford]

Hi Dbaca,

That's great news! As a non user currently, when do you think the app would be available for me to use?

Thanks

Mark

[Candi_Q]

Hi @Dbaca 

This is great news. I signed up 2 days ago for Crossborderit but have not had an update (I have emailed support). Do you know how long it will take for my IOSS number to come through? 

It was my understanding you do not need a UK VAT number to register. Is that correct?

Please see the attached picture of my current account status. Any info on next steps and expected wait time to be completely set up would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

[LauraECY]

Me again with an update on our experience with CBIT. I had quite a bit of difficulty uploading sales data and contacted support for assistance. They provided an excel document which did help as it had some explanations of what was required for each column. The csv format is quite tricky but I got there eventually by creating the data set and concatenating it. I then copied this into a new sheet to upload and that worked. 

I fed back about some confusion on the FAQ page regarding product upload and IOSS data upload. Today I see the explanatory information that really helped has been added to the FAQ page with clarification about what is required for each different process.

I am finding CBIT to be very responsive and am impressed with the speed at which they are adapting information. I am eager for the app though!

[Hermine_Makangu]

CBIT are very helpful once you contact them especially once your details are on the system.

I guess the registration depends on the demands in the country but from different forums I noticed that the average was about 2 to 5 days. If it takes longer, there may be a problem with the inormation submitted to them, so it is better to contact them.

I also had issues uploading my first file it was due to the way in which the date is written in the UK versus their system. I have a dummy example of what worked for us, it is always better to check with CBIT.

Lastly something we found useful to calculate VAT for sales that happened before we got the IOSS number: https://www.thevatcalculator.com/eu-vat-calculator/ It is very good, they calculate added VAT as well as included VAT.

IossNumber	TrackingNumber	TransactionDate	SalesAmount	VatAmount	SourceCountry	DestinationCountry	Service	IsCorrection	OriginalTransactionDate	OrderNumber
IM00000000	1ZET497KD9109	2021-07-08	111	20	GB	BE	0	0		K7HJZB

[Candi_Q]

Hi @Hermine_Makangu 

This is really helpful. Thank you! Do you have a contact number for Crossborderit? I could only find the support email which I emailed and haven't heard back.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Candice

[Hermine_Makangu]

Hi @Candi_Q 

I don't have their contact number but they were very responsive with this email: support@crossborderit.com 

[Dbaca]

We are hoping it is tested and ready late next week.