New EU tax rules

[webhosti]

the EU changes the tax rules. Now the tax rules of the country must be added to the invoice for each customer. Since we have customers from over 40 countries, from the EU and Not EU and some are reseller and others normal customers, it would be about 80 -100 rules that need to be defined. An idea how this can be arranged?

 

All Sellers will have this problem, because also a seller from USA has to add tax to a German customer and has to pay this tax to German Authorities. ( for example ).

 

You can find these new rules here

[durangod]

Interesting, do they realize what they are going to end up doing is forcing USA companies to not do business with EU because of all the extra requirements. Maybe thats how they want it, but it does not seem to me that this mind set is beneficial to anyone but the people that make the rules get to keep their jobs. Its just flat out stupid...

 

This might also lead to WHMCS having a USA office just for USA sales, tech support and the lot, to avoid all the BS..

 

I can tell you 100% that im not taking time to put all that stuff on my invoices for EU clients, its more cost effective just to let them go to another host, honestly..

Edited November 5, 2014 by durangod

[Kian]

Well it's not so complicated. Maybe it's because I'm used to italian billing system (difficulty level: nightmare) but it can be achieved with an addon module that stores all rules in databse and an action hook that gets the right one to use for every customer and recalculate all prices (if necessary) of invoices without any problems for customers.

[brian!]

i've only had a brief skim of the documents, but I couldn't find any mention of a requirement to put tax rules on the invoices - i'm not saying it isn't there, just that I couldn't find it.

 

also, it seems that it only applies when selling to consumers in the EU - not to businesses in the EU.

 

WHMCS shouldn't be affected by this as they're already registered for VAT.

 

for those outside the EU, you would just need to register for VAT in one EU country - not all of them... and as Kian suggests, it wouldn't be difficult to solve with an addon, though probably best handled by an enhanced EU VAT Addon.

 

but i'm not going to worry about this tax problem for now.

[zomex]

I hate the EU and their changes to tax rules. They have a new change coming in on the 1st January where they have removed the VAT fresh hold. No one is completely sure exactly what the specifics are, even my accountant isn't 100% yet.

[brian!]

Jack, I think you mean "VAT threshold", and the clearest information i've found so far (in terms of the UK) on this is on the HMRC website...

 

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/posmoss/index.htm?WT.ac=VAT_POSjan

 

These changes will affect all businesses that supply digital services to consumers, whether or not they are registered for UK VAT. This is because there are no registration limits for digital service supplies made to consumers outside the UK. Any business supplying digital services to a consumer in another Member State therefore has to charge VAT on the supply in that Member State and register for VAT in that Member State.

ignore the last bit as you only have to register in one EU country... but you can register in them all if you wish!

 

it does throw up some weird anomalies though, e.g if you don't meet the current VAT threshold and only sell to businesses not consumers in the EU, then this doesn't apply... but sell to consumers in the EU and the VAT threshold is zero - so you need to charge VAT at the consumer member country rate.

 

though I suspect most won't bother to check if the purchases is a consumer or business and just charge the VAT to everyone applicable.

 

the Autumn statement will be at the start of December, so I assume HMRC will be releasing more details then.

[othellotech]

i've only had a brief skim of the documents, but I couldn't find any mention of a requirement to put tax rules on the invoices - i'm not saying it isn't there, just that I couldn't find it.

It's 'worse' in that (technically) you have to make every invoice match the appropriate format for *that country* - and they all have different rules about VAT invoices - I'm trying to edit our PDF and templates to get a consolidated layout that covers all the requirements

 

I can tell you 100% that im not taking time to put all that stuff on my invoices for EU clients, its more cost effective just to let them go to another host, honestly..

 

Feel free to send them our way - as an affiliate

[durangod]

It's 'worse' in that (technically) you have to make every invoice match the appropriate format for *that country* - and they all have different rules about VAT invoices - I'm trying to edit our PDF and templates to get a consolidated layout that covers all the requirements

 

The problem with editing the pdf and the template is that you wont be able to change the filename for the pdf, most eveything else will work but the filename that shows on the email you send them will still have the original invoice format that you designate in admin.

 

Which is the reason for this http://www.whmcs.com/appstore/3278/Proforma-Invoice-Numbers-Plus.html

 

So what we can do is add some country code config so that you can set the format for each country, that would work for you right?

[othellotech]

The problem with editing the pdf and the template is that you wont be able to change the filename for the pdf

Why would anyone care about a filename ?

All WHMCS usrers have full control over the output of the tpl and pdf by editing the code / template

[durangod]

Well, that name shows up in the email, if you are going to send a copy of the invoice to your customer, it would be nice if they see the correct information on the email right, also if you are going to send a copy to you accountant then you would also need that to reflect correctly. And you cant change that info by editing the pdf and tpl. It does not make any sense to show XX14-PP02 for example on the invoice and XX14 on the email. It makes audit trail harder.

 

Also you dont have full control just by editing the tpl and pdf. You should but you dont. In order to do it all correctly and have a complete package you must also include hook(s), i say that in plural because you need to do several of them so that you can merge the new data with the email as well as other hooks to produce the full correct output.

 

I can see if you dont require a full package deal that yes you are are correct, you could get away with just doing the tpl and pdf but thats only half of the proforma and VAT requirements per many accountant and gov requirements. And if you are ever called to produce full proforma and VAT then that wont work.

Edited December 10, 2014 by durangod

[JulesR]

My biggest concern here is not the invoices, or the fact we need to apply VAT to all invoices to EU states (which is easily handled by WHMCS). My concern is that we have no way of exporting or reporting these transactions to conform to the VAT MOSS requirements, which require we submit all VAT charges over a 3 month period, every 3 months, with a full breakdown of each EU state's VAT charges to their specific spreadsheet format.

 

Currently WHMCS provides no way to do this. Considering this is something that is going to affect every hosting provider on the planet using WHMCS, I would say this is something that urgently needs to be implemented before the new year! I don't know about you guys, but manually sifting through 3 months of transactions and categorising them per EU country is not my idea of fun.

[brian!]

I wouldn't worry about that - even if WHMCS don't include such a report in their next version, I think there is at least one member here working on releasing such a report - besides, there will surely be many WHMCS updates before the need to send the first report to your local tax authorities.

[Alex - Arvixe]

I wouldn't worry about that - even if WHMCS don't include such a report in their next version, I think there is at least one member here working on releasing such a report - besides, there will surely be many WHMCS updates before the need to send the first report to your local tax authorities.

 

Yeah thats the thing, the deadline isn't exactly 1st January. It'll be once the first report is due so there is quite a bit of time still to have something out which automates this.

 

Hopefully WHMCS can sort something out though with no need for 3rd party modules.

[JulesR]

I wouldn't worry about that - even if WHMCS don't include such a report in their next version, I think there is at least one member here working on releasing such a report - besides, there will surely be many WHMCS updates before the need to send the first report to your local tax authorities.

Given the (in)frequency of substantial WHMCS feature upgrades, I won't hold my breath. It's not exactly going to be an overnight job for them to add this in or develop it, as it's relatively complex and will be time consuming to do correctly. We also, of course, need to account for bugs and then add on further time for bug fixes and releases. We then have to assume that they were aware of this requirement and have actually been working on it already before now. Let's assume they start work on this today, I think it would be incredibly optimistic to think they could release it by the time we need to submit our first quarterly VAT reports in just over 3 months. Not impossible, just unlikely in my opinion.

 

EDIT: What I am concerned about, though, is that this is something that was announced at least 6+ months ago. Surely given the industry WHMCS is involved in, they should've been on top of this from the get-go? If they haven't done it in 6 months, I'm worried they'll rush to release this in the next 3 months and do a very poor job of it. I could, of course, be completely wrong and it's already been in development for some time.

 

As it is, there are too many speculations and "what if's" involved here, so this is something we will likely be developing in-house "just in case".

Edited December 12, 2014 by JulesR

[brian!]

Hi Jules,

 

i'm not sure if you've seen the post, but WHMCS John posted his views on this topic..

 

http://forum.whmcs.com/showthread.php?95579-VATMOSS-amp-EU-VAT-changes&p=402439#post402439

 

his thought is that the current version, with the EU VAT Addon, can handle this issue... even if he's wrong, he says the dev team are looking into it.

 

there is still the outstanding issue of creating the report, but that will be resolved either by WHMCS, a third-party or your own in-house solution.

 

if memory serves, v5.3 goes end of life in Feb 2015 - I guess they could extend that if they have to, but i'd be amazed if there wasn't a v5.3 update before then.

[JulesR]

I'm aware of that, as I made clear in my initial post. I was referring to the generation of the reports which need to be in a specific format and to specific standards.

 

That said, the 'EU VAT addon' is seemingly broken and doesn't actually import the correct rates for the necessary individual EU states, instead setting them all to the default local value you input. Tested on multiple systems with the correct prerequisites, and the same problem on each system. Regardless, that's irrelevant as it's easily fixed manually.

 

Again, I've already said we're going to develop our own in-house solution. I don't mean to be rude but it seems like you've completely skipped most of the points in my post and are just replying with things I've already discussed. It makes it very difficult to have a discussion on the subject if you're going to do this!

 

The point I was trying to make is that WHMCS have had at least 6+ months to develop this, so they are either cutting things very fine to get it rolled out, or they aren't even working on it right now. Judging by the response you've linked to, it looks like this is relatively "new" information to them so it's going to be some time before they roll this out to completion. The lack of any apparent mention of this feature being implemented in a beta further makes this a concern for existing customers.

 

Do they have time? Sure, there's 3 months left. It'd be nice to get an official word on this so the many thousands of people using their software will know whether or not they will be compliant come March, or whether they need to prepare to do their own accounting and reporting, or look for a non-official module to handle this.

[brian!]

Again, I've already said we're going to develop our own in-house solution. I don't mean to be rude but it seems like you've completely skipped most of the points in my post and are just replying with things I've already discussed. It makes it very difficult to have a discussion on the subject if you're going to do this!

I didn't reply to the other points because I agreed with them - but it's not much of a discussion if I just say "me too".

regrettably, for many reasons, I find that it's not even worth debating the topic of WHMCS being late with developments.

Edited December 12, 2014 by brian!

[WHMCS John]

That said, the 'EU VAT addon' is seemingly broken and doesn't actually import the correct rates for the necessary individual EU states, instead setting them all to the default local value you input.

This is currently the intended behaviour of the EU VAT Addon. I have personally suggested to the development team that automatically creating the rules with the individual VAT rates for each EU country would be one of the ways we could make life easier for our users.

 

However we do have to consider that should a country change their VAT rate right after we've released an update, it could potentially be a few months before the next release in which that could be incorporated.

[PascM]

However we do have to consider that should a country change their VAT rate right after we've released an update, it could potentially be a few months before the next release in which that could be incorporated.

 

I don't think that VAT rates change that frequently but even if something like that occurs (a country changing their VAT rates) then probably we could manually adjust those rates for that country through the module.

[Si]

In the same way we update currency values and exchange rates via the cron, surely there should be ONE database which whmcs updates to ensure that when our cron runs, it updates with any individual country VAT rate changes?

[Kian]

In the same way we update currency values and exchange rates via the cron, surely there should be ONE database which whmcs updates to ensure that when our cron runs, it updates with any individual country VAT rate changes?

Well you could simply get the content of pages like this where you can find tax rates. I don't know if there're websites specifically made for this like Yahoo finance for currency rates, Morningstars for fund of investments etc. but it would be better than an "unofficial" database with rates.

[brian!]

you could try subscribing to a site like the one below...

 

http://www.vatlive.com/vat-rates/european-vat-rates/eu-vat-rates/

 

VAT rates are unlikely to change more than once a year per country (unless there's a financial crisis there), so it's hardly something that needs to be checked daily.

[othellotech]

It's not exactly going to be an overnight job for them to add this in or develop it, as it's relatively complex and will be time consuming to do correctly.

There isn't really anything for them to develop

* out-of-the-box WHMCS handles the new EU VAT rules (if you set it up right)

* WHMCS is _NOT_ an accounting system - and you'll be doing your MOSS reporting based on your accounts

 

There are modules/reports already that provide

# EC Sales Lists

# EU VAT Reporting

# MOSS breakdown of daily transactions

for those without the skills to create their own versions

[arhost]

There isn't really anything for them to develop

* out-of-the-box WHMCS handles the new EU VAT rules (if you set it up right)

* WHMCS is _NOT_ an accounting system - and you'll be doing your MOSS reporting based on your accounts

 

There are modules/reports already that provide

# EC Sales Lists

# EU VAT Reporting

# MOSS breakdown of daily transactions

for those without the skills to create their own versions

 

Hi,

 

Where could I buy the above reports from please?

[zomex]

Hi,

 

Where could I buy the above reports from please?

 

I would also be interested in this

 

Thanks