VAT inclusive in basket etc?

[saucysal]

I sell only direct to public, so want to show VAT inclusive prices, and am required to do so by European internet protocol. This is easy for products, but I also want this same price to appear in the basket, not split into ex-VAT with VAT added at end of basket, and I want the same price to appear in the basket and on the invoice regardless of the customer's location (eg Channel Islands). That is, I want the selling price to be the same for everybody everywhere regardless of the VAT (this means that my business gets more for non-EU orders). However, I will be using Actinic Link and Sage, and the processing of the orders must ultimately correctly account for the tax, taking into account whether products are standard or zero rated, and whether exempt as outside EU. Because of this, I cannot set Actinic not to do VAT, as it must have the same settings as Sage.

I suspect that I cannot set this up. With my present online shops I do it by not accounting for VAT at all online, but doing it correctly when processing by hand in Sage, and printing the invoice/receipt out correctly from Sage. I was hoping that by changing to Actinic I could automate at least some of the order processing, but to do this it seems that I am having to make sacrifices.

Any help? I have already searched previous threads to no avail.

Sarah

[chris ashdown]

By law if you are VAT registered you must obay the VAT rules which are EU related.

If you are not registered then you can not claim VAT on any sales

You can set up both actinic and sage to be VAT registered or Non Registered but by law cannot charge VAT on sales outside the EU and keep the money as a bonus or do i misunderstand your message

[Mike Hughes]

I thing what Sarah's saying is that she want's all her customers to pay the same price. UK and EU customers pay VAT as per normal, but those outside the EU also pay the same price, just none of it is VAT.

I'm afraid I have no idea how to do this with Actinic and Sage.

Mike

[janep]

Surcharge on non-EU

In order to charge the same exc VAT for non-EU customers as inc VAT for EU-customers, she will need to charge a 17.5% surcharge for being non-EU


I do not think it is possible to do this through product pricing but using the discounts/surcharges it should be possible to do this somehow but may need the Business edition

Perhaps someone else could clarify this direction

[saucysal]

I am not trying to do anything illegal!

Jane and Mike have understood the problem. I shall look into Jane's suggestion of a surcharge for non-EU customers, but I certainly do not want this to show up as such in the basket or on the invoice - it must just look like the total price for the product as it should be; I think it extremely unlikely that I can do this. I think that I will have to weigh up getting less for these overseas orders against the benefits in other respects of using the Actinic over my existing shop software. More importantly, however, is the fact that I cannot get rid of the VAT breakdown in the basket/invoice even for the UK customers - this is non-standard for retail sites, and confusing for the customer. The price being different for the product when they choose it to how it appears in the basket will certainly cause confusion - in the UK retail customers only care about the price that they pay and expect it to be consistent, and VAT is not something that they normally think about.

I am more than a little annoyed that Actinic appears to have been written with B2B in mind rather than B2B and B2C, and that fitting in with American tax systems has been given more importance than complying with European protocols. If I had realised this soon I may not have paid up.

Sarah