Setting up for EU Taxes & Shipping 2021 Print

In respect of tax, your website is capable of allowing you to charge different rates of tax to different countries. The way it works is as follows.

1. You assign each product a Tax Class. You can have multiple tax classes (eg. VAT, VAT Exempt) but a product can only have one tax class assigned.

2. A Tax class must have at least one Tax Rate. It can have multiple tax rates.

3. A tax rate can be applied to a Zone Definition. A zone definition can be a single country or a group of countries using the same tax rate.

As each country in the EU has the ability to change it's VAT rate, then we would recommend setting up a Zone Definition for each country to allow easy changes in the future.

You will need a tax rate for each country to be applied to it's Zone Definition.

Shipping also requires tax to be paid, and shipping to the EU may be subject to a Consignment fee, which may vary according to the courier in use. In your website admin,  configuration > My Store > Basis of Product Tax and Basis of Shipping Tax must both be set to Shipping.

Whilst you could use the default Zone Rates shipping options, the simplest way to manage the shipping is to install the JSWeb Enhanced Shipping which will allow you to configure shipping exactly as you need, and from your customers' point of view, they will only be shown shipping methods applicable to their order.

For simplicity at this point, we will assume you ONLY ship to UK/EU and that you only have a single type of delivery (eg. Standard Delivery) so you would..

1. Set up a Shipping Method.

2. Create a region for each of the countries in EU and one for the UK, applying the appropriate Tax Class (eg. VAT)

3. Configure the rate tables accordingly (this is incredibly flexible allowing shipping by value, weight or number of items at whatever cost applies, whether it be a flat rate or varying costs depending on value or quantity) for that country.

4. Each region allows you to apply surcharges. This is ideal for applying any consignment fee. Surcharges can be applied either as fixed amounts or percentages.

If you want other delivery methods (eg. Next Day, Express etc), simply repeat those 4 steps. (Tip: you can copy the first method and edit accordingly.)

You then need to ensure that any existing shipping you have set up for EU countries is disabled.

The setup isn't difficult - but it is time-consuming if you do it manually via admin. You need 28 Zone definitions (including UK, and you may need more if shipping beyond UK/EU), 28 tax rates and 28 regions for each shipping method, but with all this in place, the correct tax will be applied at checkout for the country of destination. It will also be simple and quick to subsequently change any individual country's tax level or shipping costs.

If you don't fancy the tedium of the initial setup, then we can do it for you; the exact cost will depend on how your shipping is currently configured, but please feel free to contact us for a quote. If you are not hosted by JSWeb then we would require access to your website admin to check what needs to be done.