5 ms·

It is only for calculating tax when selling to consumers.

jacquesm 10y ago
It's rare to find a business that only sells to consumers. You really should make the limitations and the targeted audience for the service absolutely clear or you're going to create a world of hurt for the people that use your service thinking you are solving a problem for them. Essentially you are giving tax advice, that's not an arena you should walk into without professional guidance to make sure you get this 100% right, both from a liability perspective as well as from the perspective of your customers who will come to rely on it (and who won't be able to point at you if you get something wrong). Things you need (at a minimum): - the date of the transaction (in case a transaction is processed for a date in the past or the future rather than at the moment of the API call when the rates were different than they are today) - a means to update VAT rates exactly when they are changed in real life (typically: a system that remembers the VAT rates historically) - a way to identify the nature of the customers (business / private individuals) - a way to identify the nature of the product sold (goods, services, a combination of both, and what kind of goods) - a data privacy statement (you're dealing with consumer data if the API is called from within a webpage running on the consumers browser) And whatever else I've forgotten but which your local VAT/tax consultant should be able to answer. You are taking care of one very simple case which the VATMOSS portal in a way already handles without clearly delineating what that case is and which cases you explicitly don't handle. The easiest improvement to the site would be to include a large font line at the top stating this limitation. "This tool is only to calculate VAT when selling services or digital goods to consumers" Also, I think part of what throws people off about what the intended use case is is that you ask for the zip of consumer and country of origin of seller, which does not matter for VATMOSS, it is the country the consumer is in that determines the rate so you don't actually need the country of origin for services/digital goods as far as I know.
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  Hmm, are you sure there is a difference between consumers and businesses when it comes to VATMOSS? Google, for example, charges VAT for digital services such as Google Suite even when you provide a valid European VAT number. (As a business customer, this doesn't affect me, as I simply get to deduct this on my own return.)
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Yes, but I can see why some businesses would not want to deal with that hassle, simply invoice including VAT and let the customer sort out the recoup. But technically you don't have to and many businesses customers will appreciate this.

It's rare to find a business that only sells to consumers. You really should make the limitations and the targeted audience for the service absolutely clear or you're going to create a world of hurt for the people that use your service thinking you are solving a problem for them. Essentially you are giving tax advice, that's not an arena you should walk into without professional guidance to make sure you get this 100% right, both from a liability perspective as well as from the perspective of your customers who will come to rely on it (and who won't be able to point at you if you get something wrong). Things you need (at a minimum): - the date of the transaction (in case a transaction is processed for a date in the past or the future rather than at the moment of the API call when the rates were different than they are today) - a means to update VAT rates exactly when they are changed in real life (typically: a system that remembers the VAT rates historically) - a way to identify the nature of the customers (business / private individuals) - a way to identify the nature of the product sold (goods, services, a combination of both, and what kind of goods) - a data privacy statement (you're dealing with consumer data if the API is called from within a webpage running on the consumers browser) And whatever else I've forgotten but which your local VAT/tax consultant should be able to answer. You are taking care of one very simple case which the VATMOSS portal in a way already handles without clearly delineating what that case is and which cases you explicitly don't handle. The easiest improvement to the site would be to include a large font line at the top stating this limitation. "This tool is only to calculate VAT when selling services or digital goods to consumers" Also, I think part of what throws people off about what the intended use case is is that you ask for the zip of consumer and country of origin of seller, which does not matter for VATMOSS, it is the country the consumer is in that determines the rate so you don't actually need the country of origin for services/digital goods as far as I know.

stdbrouw 10y ago
Hmm, are you sure there is a difference between consumers and businesses when it comes to VATMOSS? Google, for example, charges VAT for digital services such as Google Suite even when you provide a valid European VAT number. (As a business customer, this doesn't affect me, as I simply get to deduct this on my own return.)
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Yes, but I can see why some businesses would not want to deal with that hassle, simply invoice including VAT and let the customer sort out the recoup. But technically you don't have to and many businesses customers will appreciate this.