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Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

vatmossapi.com

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Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#111

Post by BukhariH »

jacquesm wrote: post #9
timvdalen wrote: post #2

Doesn't seem correct, at least for Holland. As far as I'm aware, as a seller in The Netherlands, you only have to charge VAT for buyers that are also in The Netherlands.

You're simply dead wrong about that. When selling services online to consumers you have to charge the going rate in the country of your consumers. VATMOSS is one of the reasons I shut down a small SAAS aimed at consumers, by the time the bookkeeper was done with the VAT filings they'd eaten up all the profits. It's a ridiculous system without any minimum levels.

100% agree. In the UK we have a £85,000 threshold for VAT registration which is basically means an extra £17,000 for small businesses.

However, VAT MOSS has no threshold. That means small businesses now have to make a decision between keeping that extra £17k and not selling to the EU or selling to the EU and forgoing the £17k tax break.

Awfully designed system.

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#112

Post by return0 »

ckastner wrote: post #77

While the effort in general should be appreciated (especially open sourcing the code!), I'm doubtful that the REST API has practical use. "I calculated the VAT for the products I'm selling using that one website" is just too much of a liability risk for a business to take. Who do you hold liable in the event that the calculation was wrong?

If i understand correctly, you have to do take into account the different VATs, and also, if you cross some limits you need to register for VAT in the customer's country. There's a startup (http://www.taxdoo.com/docs/en/) that wants to deal with this mess.

In my case, i use an american company to handle virtual goods to avoid this brainteaser.

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#113

Post by mobiplayer »

agopaul wrote: post #63

The barrier of running an EU B2C business is so high if you need to sell all over EU that most of the time it doesn't even make sense. It's a shame because if you're in the EU and you want to bootstrap a small B2C business you have no choice other than sticking to the country you're in.

How does tax work in the US?

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#114

Post by zigzigzag »

Silhouette wrote: post #105
stdbrouw wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid adding to the misinformation and ignorance out there, what are some of these edge cases and minor details?

A few that come to mind immediately are the record-keeping requirements (need to keep two acceptable and non-conflicting sources of evidence for each place of supply, for a long time), geolocation inaccuracy (geo-IP databases typically have about 5-10% error rate in country identification according to most reports I've seen), regional variations (dependent territories might have different tax rules to their parent me…

Don't forget the special rules that apply if the person buying your digital goods is on a ship at the time!

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#115

Post by martinald »

kspaans wrote: post #99
waynecochran wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am admittedly naive on these matters, but I always thought that VAT is more efficient than a sales tax from the vendor's perspective and transparent to the consumer (an item costs $1.25 and you pay $1.25).

The main difference between VAT and sales tax is that VAT is paid by each stage in the supply chain (every time someone "adds value"), and reclaimed by charging it to the next stage up in the chain. Sales tax is charged only once, at the final point of sale to the consumer. The end effect is the same: the consumer ends up paying whatever % the tax is. The difference is in how it's collected. Sales tax is easier to ev…

But on the other hand there is a catastrophic amount of VAT carousel fraud going on, which is even worse than just 'tax fraud' (ie: not paying tax) because the govt is paying out VAT losses but not then collecting the VAT gains in the carousel.

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#117

Post by toyg »

blibble wrote: post #101
toyg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The misrepresentation in your calculation is that with VAT you really sell a widget for £12; if you're selling to businesses, they recoup those £2 so they don't care, and if you're selling to consumers all your competitors also factor in the same tax in their prices so again nobody cares. At that point, 5000 widgets at 10 net = 50000 - 8000 net costs = 42000 -> as a business, if your costs include VAT, you're actuall…

all of my customers, bar one, are non-VAT-registered the actual numbers above are examples, but the scenario matches mine pretty much perfectly, so I'm not sure why you would say that I'm misrepresenting anything these are digital services, not cars or cans of soup

You must be selling to very small businesses then. Still, your digital services probably involve a website, for which you pay VAT that could otherwise claim back - or is your ISP also not VAT registered? In that case you'd be in a very, very small minority. Even hosting out of your bedroom you'd be paying vat on the iron you buy and the connection you use. And of course there's vat on all your desktop/laptop hardware, consumables, your chair, your desk...

Re: Show HN: A REST API for Calculating VAT in the EU

#118

Post by talideon »

Silhouette wrote: post #96
talideon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the headline rate is applicable for most things, but not everything, and those differences can be important. For instance, if Amazon are selling children's shoes into Ireland, they must charge 0% VAT. That's still a digital sale.

That's a sale of goods, though, which isn't currently covered by the VAT rules and MOSS scheme that we're discussing here, and doesn't seem to be the intended use for the OP's API.

That still makes it rather useless as an API, when it could be reduced down to a conditional GET on a CSV file listing the countries and their headline VAT rates.

For this to be useful as an API, it would need to deal with the actual complicated bits of VATMOSS, which is dealing with multiple different rates for different product types.

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