NEW: Local VAT Number database!

From 1 January 2015, supplies of telecommunications, broadcasting and electronically supplied services made by EU suppliers to private individuals and non-business customers will be taxable in the Member State of the customer.

You are also required to obtain two pieces of country evidence of the buyer's location. For every order, you can use the buyers billing address and the buyers IP address for the country as evidence.

Make your shop EU VAT compliant, fast and easy
The EU VAT Compliant extension allows you to collect and validate EU VAT numbers on your registration and checkout form, exempt businesses from VAT if necessary, collect and validate user location in B2C transactions, and handle the EU Tax requirements for digital goods.

The EU VAT Compliant extension will adds a 'VAT number' custom field to the registration form and checkout form (both registration & guest). The buyer can select the type (Customer group): Customer/Private or Business and based on this type the VAT number field will be visible or hidden and will be validated if needed.

Customer/Private
When type is Customer/Private, the VAT number field will not show. The buyer is generally charged for VAT taxes according to OpenCart standard config. In this case if they are an EU buyer they are charged with the VAT of their country, non EU buyers are not charged with VAT).

Business
When type is Business, the VAT number field is visible, but optional. If the VAT number is filled in and validated, this buyer is not charged with VAT tax (Reverse charge - VAT exempt), even if they are an EU buyer.

VAT number validation methods
EU VAT extension contains two methods of VAT number validations, online and offline validation. The online validation will use the free API from VIES (ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies) to validate the VAT number against the VIES VAT Number Database. The Offline validation uses dedicated algorithm for each country to validate the VAT number syntax. Which validation method is used can be configured in the extension settings, Offline, Online or both.

On every location and form, front-end and admin, the VAT number can be changed and will be validated.

VAT number validation when already registered
During each new order the VAT number will be validated again before the order can be completed, so when a VAT number of a registered buyer is no longer valid, the buyer will asked first to edit his VAT number before completing his order.

Collecting evidence of a buyer's location
The VAT on digital goods must be calculated based on the customer location, and you need to collect two pieces of country evidence, the billing address and the country based on the IP address are the most easy ones. With the free Online IP address service from GEOplugin (www.geoplugin.com), the billing country will be validated against the IP address country, if they match, the order can be completed.

When the country mismatch, the buyer will be noticed and asked to confirm their billing address is correct before completing the order. This confirmation will be logged in the 'Customer Activity' log and in a special evidence logfile 'owc_euvat_ip_address_confirmed.log' in the system log folder.

Supported checkout extensions

• Dreamvention Ajax Quick Checkout (tested up to version 7.2.10)
  
• MarketInSG Quick Checkout (tested up to version 11.0.0) 
• OnePageCheckout (tested up to version 4.0)
  
• Ajax Best Checkout (tested up to version 5.0.2.3)
• Quick n Easy Checkout (tested up to version 5.8.8)
• Quick Checkhout/Onepage Checkout by ModulePoints (tested up to version 1.0)
• Journal 2 Theme with Journal Quick Checkout (tested up to version 2.15.7)
• Journal 3 Theme with Journal Quick Checkout (tested up to version 3.2)

Supported shipping extensions

• Clear Thinking Category & Product-Based Shipping (tested up to version 303.3)
• Clear Thinking Ultimate Shipping (tested up to version 302.2)
• Clear Thinking Ultimate Fee/Discount (tested up to version 303.2)
• Clear Thinking Ultimate Coupons (tested up to version 303.2)
• Clear Thinking Individual Shipping (tested up to version 303.1)

Supported other extensions

• CartBinder Customized One Page Order Entry For Admin (tested up to version 17.1c)
• Multisafepay Smart Payment Services

• Bulgarian
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Greek
• Italian
• Lithuanian
• Romanian
• Spanish
• Swedish