No VAT in Checkout (Again)

[lessharma]

Sorry about this, I've been reading and looking up all VAT stuff in the forum.

Has anyone found a good way of turning on VAT in Actinic but not showing the customer in the checkout or product pages ANYTHING TO DO WITH VAT or any VAT breakdowns.

We are a retailer and don't want our customers to see that the price shown includes VAT at 17.5 %. But VAT needs to be turned on in Actinic to show VAT breakdowns in orders when using Sage, which is catch 22!

[fleetwood]

This is a key wish list item - probably worth adding your vote if not already done so

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=25813

[lessharma]

Thanks for the reply. Will add my vote.

One other VAT related question. We have a Royal Mail account and every month we get an invoice from them for postage/shipping, as I'm sure you know postage by Royal Mail is Exempt from VAT and Royal Mail don't add VAT to our invoice.

So in turn we don't change VAT on postage, just on the product itself. But by just looking at a few Actinic sites why do site owners change VAT on products and postage/shipping when postage is exempt from VAT.

[dave_finlayson]

Can't speak for anyone else but we charge VAT as we only use couriers, who do charge VAT!

[Mike Hughes]

If you charge VAT on goods in your order then you have to charge VAT on the shipping for that order, even though Royal Mail don't charge you VAT on their services.

Its a Customs and excise regulation so they're going to make you pay them the VAT on the shipping even if you haven't been charging it. There are many posts on this in the past and you can check on the HMR&C website.

Mike

Edit: here's the bit from VAT Notice 700, section 8.3

send goods by post

charge made to you by the Post Office is exempt, but your charge to your customer is taxable even if it is exactly equal to the charge made to you by the Post Office.

[leehack]

I concur, the reason your charge on shipping is that it is a service you are providing the customer, so therefore taxable.

[lessharma]

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm glad I posted this today, as I'm doing my first VAT report this week and really didn't realise that I needed to charge VAT on Royal Mail.
I had a long meeting with my accountant today and he missed this also.

So the VAT man gets more money in the end!