Apologies if this is covered elsewhere, please point me in the right direction if so - searching found lots of posts for Ubercart and nothing for Ecommerce. My issue is that in certain parts of the EU (including the UK where I am based) a displayed price must by law include any relevant VAT, with the ex VAT price optional. Currently Ecommerce shows all prices excluding tax until checkout.

As I am still in the planning stage, I am evaluating both shopping solutions for Drupal, as well as third party solutions (oscommerce, ZenCart, Magento, etc). I have found a partial solution for Ubercart, but issues are cropping up in other areas which do not appear in Ecommerce. Is there a similar solution for Ecommerce? Entering prices excluding VAT and then display the price inclusive of VAT on the product/catalogue page and in the shopping cart is not an issue. If it is solvable with a combination of views and custom code that will be an acceptable solution although as I am an average programmer at best, a little guidance would be much appreciated.

I would prefer a Drupal based solution to reduce the complexity of maintaining and customising a shop. I have chosen 5x-3.6 over 5x-4 as Alpha class code is not acceptable to those who control the budget.

Thanks in advance

Comments

gordon’s picture

gordon commented

The problem is that this can never be 100% as you never really know where they are coming from until they checkout and provide addresses so you can calculate vat.

You could have all your prices as VAT inclusive and then on the invoice add "Invoice includes x VAT" which is what I have done for GST before.

The other option is to display the price ex-VAT and also if you think they are going to be charged VAT show the VAT-inc figure as well.

Balefire’s picture

Balefire commented

Thanks for the response, Gordon. The way I thought it would be handled:
The store location is UK. An item is entered with a nett price of £10.00.

  1. User not logged in or no location information available for logged in user:
    display price in the store location format with any modification applied for that location - e.g:
    £11.50 (£10.00 Ex VAT)
    Then adjust once user/delivery location information available in checkout
  2. User location information available (e.g. France):
    display price with any modification for their location - e.g:
    €12.93 (€10.50 Ex VAT)

The problem I can see with prices entered including VAT is that if the VAT rate is changed (as has recently happened in the UK) the prices are now incorrect and have to be individually adjusted. Also, EU stores cannot charge local VAT to someone in the EU who is having the item delivered to a location where they hold a valid VAT registration certificate. This means we have to remove VAT instead of adding it (the ecommerce default).

It's unfortunate there appears to be no ready solution for ecommerce (or Übercart for that matter).

gordon’s picture

gordon commented

Basically yes there is no real solution, but you can work around it.

In v4 I am hoping that e-Commerce will be able to do with without any real issue.