VAT / TAX, overlooked issue.

[ekforum]

What is owed and calculating VAT

I am sure that the majority of forums that are using Invision are not affected by this, either because they do hit the VAT threshold (£90k for UK businesses, 85k€ for EU businesses, £0/0€ for offshore businesses selling to UK/EU) or they are unaware of their VAT/Tax requirements. But as soon as a business needs to register for VAT this affects them. Digital Services, as I am currently aware are VATable at the standard rate, 20% in UK, different percentage in Europe depending on the country of consumption. 

This amount of tax can easily be calculated through the stripe integration as far as I am aware, if I toggle the Stripe setting for that calculation on, at an additional 0.5%. Meaning that it is easy to calculate the amount of Tax owed but he amount of money received through Stripe.

The amount of tax for US, depends on states, the thresholds, if they are a monetary threshold and/or a transaction threshold. Some states are tax free for some services, others are taxable depending on the limits.

The issue is with how invoices are displayed in Invision. 

What I would like to do

What I would like to achieve is a singular price for all customers/members, e.g. £10 per month. With any applicable Tax/VAT being absorbed by the business. 

There is no way to correctly do this and show the correct amount of tax paid on the Invision invoice?

Invision has two settings. A system setting that can be toggled to include/exclude tax in the price. And an adjustable tax rates that can be added to a product/subscription (different rates can be added). 

 

Setting for tax included toggled ON. Tax rate on product/ subscription NOT ADDED.

This would display no information about the tax on the Invision issued invoice. We can still collect and remit the correct amount of VAT as per the Stripe calculation above, but we would be unable to provide subscribers with a tax invoice breaking down VAT paid?

Setting for tax included toggled OFF. Tax rate on product/ subscription NOT ADDED.

Same as above.

Setting for tax included toggled ON. Tax rate on product/ subscription ADDED.

This increases the total price on the invoice, making it £12 not £10, on the example price.
I would need to set the rate to £8.33, so that the rate paid is £10 when the tax is added, but the issue is then some customers would pay £8.33 if their countries VAT/TAX rate is 0% instead of £10 that they are supposed to.

Setting for tax included toggled OFF. Tax rate on product/ subscription ADDED.

This just changes the rate shown in the forum store. The actually invoice is the same as above, resulting in some members being able to lay £8.33 and see £10.



What I would like to achieve, which should just be a normal business setting? There are no setting combinations to achieve this?

I would like to achieve is a singular price for all customers/members, e.g. £10 per month. With any applicable Tax/VAT being absorbed by the business. But still to show the customer the amount of VAT specific to their purchase. It should be very easy to active, all you do is have X as the price that is displayed to all, and the VAT/TAX part of the invoice that includes the value based on the % of VAT setting chosen, deducing it instead of adding it.

In conclusion all I want is a simple price for all customers, and we as a business absorb any necessary and applicable taxes as a business expense. Therefore treating all individual customers equally.

Is there no way of doing this? Surely there has to be and I am just missing it?

Edited Friday at 08:09 AM by ekforum

[opentype]

Most professional online software systems offer this. You choose to set all your prices with tax or without tax and then the software either adds or subtracts the taxes based on this choice throughout the entire system. With Invision Community, you can only add taxes. That’s a little annoying, if only for ending up with rounding errors, where a certain target price can’t even be reached and you end up with 19,99 € or 20,01 € instead of the 20,00 you might want. I probably made a feature request for that as well some years ago. 
So, yeah, it would be nice, but I am not holding my breath. That’s a foundational underlying principle in any shopping software, not just a matter of adding a few conditions to the cart display or an invoice. I doubt this is easy to implement at this stage – not to mention that this interacts with all the complicated tax calculations that are already going on behind the scenes. 

[ekforum]

15 minutes ago, opentype said:

Most professional online software systems offer this. You choose to set all your prices with tax or without tax and then the software either adds or subtracts the taxes based on this choice throughout the entire system. With Invision Community, you can only add taxes. That’s a little annoying, if only for ending up with rounding errors, where a certain target price can’t even be reached and you end up with 19,99 € or 20,01 € instead of the 20,00 you might want. I probably made a feature request for that as well some years ago. 
So, yeah, it would be nice, but I am not holding my breath. That’s a foundational underlying principle in any shopping software, not just a matter of adding a few conditions to the cart display or an invoice. I doubt this is easy to implement at this stage – not to mention that this interacts with all the complicated tax calculations that are already going on behind the scenes. 

Can it not be as simple as:

Price displayed in store with applicable taxes. 

VAT/Tax settings are set up (same way they currently are, for the different rates for the different regions)

Invoice shows:
Total: total price paid the same as (Price displayed in store with applicable taxes.)
Tax: the part of the total amount that constitutes tax, based on the rates chosen. 



This is just for displaying the invoice to the customer. The actual tax calculation (which is 100% correct) is done by stripe, no additional charges are added, it just calculates the tax owed on the amounts received. 

The issue may be, and I haven't researched into it fully, but just assuming. If I am a VAT registered business and charging VAT as standard, must I not legally give VAT invoices? So just selecting NO TAX, on the tax setting and omitting this information may not be good. 

I wish to have a singular price for consumers, but also display any applicable taxes paid for the customer so that they are aware. Also helps to let members know that not all of the payment is for the business and some goes to paying VAT so they are aware. 

@opentype if you are looking for the same sort of feature as me as above, I could check with one of the devs that we use what their cost is and perhaps we could split the cost of this custom plugin/application? If it is a reasonable cost to do.

[opentype]

3 minutes ago, ekforum said:

The actual tax calculation (which is 100% correct) is done by stripe, no additional charges are added, it just calculates the tax owed on the amounts received. 

That doesn’t work. IC Commerce is not built around Stripe. It needs to also calculate taxes properly if the website doesn’t use Stripe or Stripe and PayPal for example. So, relying on Stripe for taxation is not very helpful. It might even make things worse if the tax calculations differ or if the user downloads an invoice from Commerce without tax, but you are calculating tax in Stripe. 

And this might be why you are struggling with this. You really need to set all this stuff up in Commerce. It’s not the most flexible and intuitive interface, but it does work. The software does allow for B2C and B2B sales, location taxation, VAT ID checks and all the usual stuff. 
Just remember that you will always input prices without tax. That’s the thing you cannot change. But you can calculate proper taxes. 

[ekforum]

Seems like you are not actually looking for what I am looking for as you missed my offer. So I will withdraw that offer and get something custom made and paid fully by myself. 

19 minutes ago, opentype said:

That doesn’t work. IC Commerce is not built around Stripe. It needs to also calculate taxes properly if the website doesn’t use Stripe or Stripe and PayPal for example. So, relying on Stripe for taxation is not very helpful. It might even make things worse if the tax calculations differ or if the user downloads an invoice from Commerce without tax, but you are calculating tax in Stripe. 

To clarify, I mean it works for my specific tax liabilities, to make sure that I pay the correct amount of taxes. This statement was purely around paying the correct amount of VAT/Tax owed for my specific business on the basis that Stripe will have to be used for all transactions. And if all transactions are processed through Stripe, it does ensure that the correct amount of taxes are paid. So in the context of purely paying the correct taxes, that does work.

Using Stripe for tax calculations is more accurate as they handle tax VAT/TAX rate updates automatically. Invision (excluding EU only) is completely manual tax inputs for each country. This in itself is an issue.

In practice for my example both Invision rates need to be set to give customers the invoice through Invision, and Stripe used to accurately calculate VAT and taxes owed. I wouldn't personally reply just on the manual rates you insert into invision for actually calculating how much VAT and TAX you need to pay to governments. 

But your points does highlight several issues with Invision, I agree that they should and is which I was stating originally.

19 minutes ago, opentype said:

And this might be why you are struggling with this. You really need to set all this stuff up in Commerce. It’s not the most flexible and intuitive interface, but it does work. The software does allow for B2C and B2B sales, location taxation, VAT ID checks and all the usual stuff. 
Just remember that you will always input prices without tax. That’s the thing you cannot change. But you can calculate proper taxes. 

Struggling because there is no such setting to achieve what I want to do. And what I want to achieve is what many businesses already do do (just not with Invison as far as I am aware, unless they have a custom solution) 

Maybe you are misunderstanding what I want to do. 

You state now that it works but previously stated in your other part of your message that you had some things you wanted to change, implying it doesn't work. 

I want to display one price, inclusive of any applicable taxes. Highlighting the word applicable. The business absorbs the applicable taxes. And a correct invoice is produced for the customer, depending on their location and if individual/customer or VAT registered, which creates a combination of different results. This isn't possible on Invision. 

Again it should be very simply for in-vision to add this. And I am unsure why it hasn't been requested for other global businesses (if it hasn't done so already):

33 minutes ago, ekforum said:

Can it not be as simple as:

Price displayed in store with applicable taxes. 

VAT/Tax settings are set up (same way they currently are, for the different rates for the different regions)

Invoice shows:
Total: total price paid the same as (Price displayed in store with applicable taxes.)
Tax: the part of the total amount that constitutes tax, based on the rates chosen. 
 

Edited Friday at 09:47 AM by ekforum

[Marc]

I have moved this to our feedback area, rather than general discussion, which I believe is your intention

[opentype]

It’s not possible, because you would be the only Invision Community user who would want use this super strange approach. Taxation that depends on the user needs to be handled in the shopping software itself: from the product page (where base taxes might be shown and might be legally required to show), to the cart, to the checkout (where most of the relevant decisions about taxation need to be made) to the final invoice. In many jurisdictions, it is even required to show this information upfront. But you don’t want to set up any taxation in the shopping software, let it all calculate by Stripe (which is way too late as it happens at the point of purchase), and then have proper taxes in the shopping software (you chose not to have taxation calculated in) because you now want it for the user invoices. That’s self-contradicting. 

My suggestion would be:

• A) Again, use the internal taxation methods of Invision Community. It takes a little work but it is not rocket science. (Keep in mind: this is based on your local jurisdiction(s), not the taxation rules of the entire world. As a business in Germany, taxation for the USA is “0 percent“ and I am done. The state rules you mentioned don’t apply to me.)
•  B) Skip the Commerce software altogether and use a custom app to ONLY interact with Stripe for your orders, taxation and invoicing. 

You need to pick one. You can’t have it both ways. 

[ekforum]

35 minutes ago, opentype said:

It’s not possible, because you would be the only Invision Community user who would want use this super strange approach. Taxation that depends on the user needs to be handled in the shopping software itself: from the product page (where base taxes might be shown and might be legally required to show), to the cart, to the checkout (where most of the relevant decisions about taxation need to be made) to the final invoice. In many jurisdictions, it is even required to show this information upfront. But you don’t want to set up any taxation in the shopping software, let it all calculate by Stripe (which is way too late as it happens at the point of purchase), and then have proper taxes in the shopping software (you chose not to have taxation calculated in) because you now want it for the user invoices. That’s self-contradicting. 

My suggestion would be:

• A) Again, use the internal taxation methods of Invision Community. It takes a little work but it is not rocket science. (Keep in mind: this is based on your local jurisdiction(s), not the taxation rules of the entire world. As a business in Germany, taxation for the USA is “0 percent“ and I am done. The state rules you mentioned don’t apply to me.)
•  B) Skip the Commerce software altogether and use a custom app to ONLY interact with Stripe for your orders, taxation and invoicing. 

You need to pick one. You can’t have it both ways. 

Please stop completely misinterpreting or assuming what I wrote means something else.

Nowhere did I state why you imply I stated, you said "But you don’t want to set up any taxation in the shopping software, let it all calculate by Stripe (which is way too late as it happens at the point of purchase), and then have proper taxes in the shopping software (you chose not to have taxation calculated in) because you now want it for the user invoices. That’s self-contradicting. " This is false. 

I think you are perhaps just trying to argue for the sake of argument, you are completely misconstruing what I wrote. 

I didn't say that I do not want to use Invision to show the taxes on the invoice, I am stating that the invoices do not show the taxes that I need. That is the issue. 

Your point B implies that you can disable Invision invoices and let Stripe send out invoices instead, even when a purchase is made through Invision for a membership subscription. Do you know if that is actually the case? Not sure what you mean by 'Commerce' software. I also didn't mention any Commerce software, only invision and Stripe.

 

37 minutes ago, opentype said:

you would be the only Invision Community user who would want use this super strange approach.

I do not think it is a "super strange approach." I think you are misinterpreting what I am saying.

Many businesses do exactly what I am suggesting, to have one price for all B2C customers and any applicable taxes are built into the price, absorbed by the company.

The fact that Invision can not do this is the exact reason for this topic.  

Examples:

(consumer) Customers in the US: pay £10 per month (invision invoice shows VAT at 0%) 
(consumer) Customers in UK: Pay £10 (invoice shows total amount paid £10, £8.33 before VAT, amount of VAT £1.67)

This is for individual customers, subscriptions. Both customers pay the same, but the business absorbs the VAT as a business operating cost. I do not believe this to be a strange business concept. 

Businesses have separate subscriptions. But again the same, the price is inclusive of any applicable VAT/TAX, and those with VAT registration numbers can remove the VAT when purchasing.  



My suggestion was:

Quote

Price displayed in store with applicable taxes. 

VAT/Tax settings are set up (same way they currently are, for the different rates for the different regions)

Invoice shows:
Total: total price paid the same as (Price displayed in store with applicable taxes.)
Tax: the part of the total amount that constitutes tax, based on the rates chosen. 

 

[opentype]

21 minutes ago, ekforum said:

I think you are perhaps just trying to argue for the sake of argument, you are completely misconstruing what I wrote. 

Good luck then. If you can’t appreciate the time invest to give explanations and suggestions about the IPS software and taxation in general, you are on your own. 

[ekforum]

23 minutes ago, opentype said:

Good luck then. If you can’t appreciate the time invest to give explanations and suggestions about the IPS software and taxation in general, you are on your own. 

The problem is that you were misunderstand what I was writing. And stating things that I simply did not state. 

I also wasn't asking you for tax advice, not sure if you are qualified to give such advice anyway.
 

23 minutes ago, opentype said:

you are on your own. 

Again, showing you are not a nice person. And trying to speak on behalf of the the whole invision community suggesting to or implying that no one else is going to help.

Hopefully some other helpful, and nice, members of the forum can help out with useful suggestions, or workaround.

I guess the only solution is for a plugin. 🙂 

Edited Friday at 12:16 PM by ekforum

[Marc]

I'm sure there is no need for the argument here guys. The suggestion is here in the feedback area, and will of course be read through as we do with all feedback

[opentype]

10 minutes ago, ekforum said:

The problem is that you were misunderstand what I was writing.

You can keep repeating it all day long. It doesn’t make it true. I grasped your feature request immediately, even though you lay it out in a way that is much too complicated. You want a fixed price for everyone ("a simple price for all customers") and then have the proper taxation show depending on the customer. I get it. It’s not hard. But you ignore, that this is not how taxation in regular shopping software works at all. There are two systems:

1. You start with a tax-not-included price and then some customers might have taxes added later (usually during checkout)
2. You start with a tax-included price and some customers might get a tax reduction later (usually during checkout)

You want a third option, that does not exist. I know you don’t want to see it like that, but by asking for a fixed price for everyone, you are asking the shopping software to NOT DO TAXATION AT ALL, i.e. not to add or subtract anything at any point. Yet, you still want taxation to display. This is where it breaks down and that’t why you keep saying it doesn’t show the way you want and that’s why I keep saying that the problem is that you don’t want to set up the proper taxes in Commerce. If you would, they would show properly, but they will not used fixed prices, because that is not how taxation works in a standard shopping software. And that doesn’t even address the problem of having independent tax calculations in Commerce and Stripe. It’s a mess. And I am justified in pointing that out. If only to make you understand why this functionality is not supported. 

 

13 minutes ago, ekforum said:

Again, showing you are not a nice person.

Once again, I address and explain the topic at hand (tax functionalities), you again get personal and “laugh“ about my comment. It’s called projection, it’s dishonest (framing) and it is completely irrelevant. If you care more whether my comments feel nice enough for you vs. whether they are correct/helpful in their content, and if people aren’t allowed to comment on potential problems with your feature requests, please state that upfront, so we don’t waste our time and only end up being personally insulted for investing time helping you see things clearer. Maybe one day, you will talk it over with an expert for shopping software or a tax consultant and you will realize that all I stated was actually true and you will apologize. Until then, welcome to the block list. 

[ekforum]

Thank you for the reply. 

I think think the issue may stem from you telling me how I am thinking or what I am doing, when that is in fact just your interpretation of the events from your side. And I stand by the statement that you are misunderstanding several of my posts. 

42 minutes ago, opentype said:

you are asking the shopping software to NOT DO TAXATION AT ALL

I am not asking the system to not do any tax, I am exactly asking for the invoice to show the tax. 
 

42 minutes ago, opentype said:

You want a third option, that does not exist

Yes exactly, doesn't exist in invision, hence I am asking for it. 



A disagree that a single price model is 'strange'.

Netflix for example have a single price model per country, and the amount of tax charged depends on the customers billing address, but the end price is the same. Spotify, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Microsoft 365, Apple Cloud+ the same. (not to confuse their different pricing in different regions) Their prices for a specific regions are the same total price, irrespective of the customers billing region. 

I believe this to be a fairer way of pricing for the customer, so all customers pay the same, and the business absorbs the necessary VAT/Tax within the product price. 
 

42 minutes ago, opentype said:

so we don’t waste our time and only end up being personally insulted for investing time helping you see things clearer.

The last past of your paragraph I will ignore apart from the brief statement; I will say that I believe it is you who is trying to project onto me. I never insulted you. But you seem to have taken some offence that I used the laugh emoji in reaction to your not very nice comment. And I still stand by my comment that I do not think you are a nice person, I conclude this based upon your written messages.  🙂 

I haven not been dishonest at all in what I have written. 
 

42 minutes ago, opentype said:

Until then, welcome to the block list.

I do agree that is the best course of action. I have never had to use it here, in nearly 10 years, but certainly would consider using it for you too 🙂 Thank you for the time nether-the-less.
 

Edited Friday at 01:55 PM by ekforum

[beats23]

It’s none of my business, but I must say, it’s quite an interesting read 🙂.