One idea is to add a checkbox under the PayPal plans asking the user if they are living in the UK/EU, then if that check box is checked, I can add a feature to add a configurable percentage to the cost of the membership. Would that be feasible?

Sincerely,
Leighton Whiting

As an European, I know this VAT thing can be important, at least in some cases. However, it can also take a lot of time and effort to try to make it right and keep everything up to date. This European VAT -thing is a great example how a huge group of politically selected overpaid bureaucrats, without any real responsibility nor understanding of real life, can pick a tiny thing up and during the years cook a huge industry around it. Most of the EU-taxes collected, are going just to keep the huge collecting offices up & running.

Sorry, out off topic, but had to say, grr...  ;)

I'm not any taxation expert nor a software designer, but what comes into my mind from MoneyScripts -modules point of view, maybe the easiest solution could be some kind of connection to some other module / system what can take care about VAT and keep the tax authorities happy? (maybe in the ms-scripts settings, just choose PayPal & ClickBank etc. to take care of VAT?)

My personal opinion is, MoneyScripts -modules should mostly focus the resources on how to make it easier for module users to make more business with the modules. Business functionality of the modules is the most important thing. Everything else should come after that, and all kind of assistive things should be avoided if possible.

Maybe these links can give some additional info about the VAT -thingy:

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/index_en.htm

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/traders/invoicing_rules/index_en.htm

Shane,
Yeah, the best way would just be to add the tax on yourself in the subscription price. This is what everyone else seems to be doing on the PayPal Forums.

Sincerely,
Leighton Whiting

Taking into account that the VAT thing is something all those selling to or from any EU country would need to take care of, I think it makes some sense trying to figure out a way to deal with it (which btw, I think it would be an excellent feature for MS-Suite to gain market in Europe, where Drupal community is very strong).
Summing up, there are mainly to ways to deal with VAT:
- As an EU seller. The seller only taxes VAT for other EU buyers, no matter the original country of the buyer. Buyers out of EU are not taxed. The tax level is that of the seller's country
- As a seller outside EU selling to EU buyers. The tax level is that of the country of each buyer.

I guess a good approach could be to manage this in a country oriented fashion. In the settings page, add a "use advanced VAT" setting, where you can also specify if you as a seller are located inside or outside EU, and a tax value to be applied if inside. If that option is activated, just ask the buyer where he is from, with a country field, during registry or checkout, and then modify prices accordingly (and save them to same place). It would be easy to have a mini table (or some variables) to store some EU countries and their VAT values (which should be configured by the seller at the time of setting up the suite). As the added taxes would be easily associated to the country where they are dued, reporting, and later payment to authorities would be very easy.

One can argue that asking the buyer where he is from seems not enough to prevent fraud. But buyers are always enforced in the terms of the site to reflect true data, so if there is some fraud in the provided info, it is not the seller's fraud, but the buyer's.
I am not a coder (though I can mostly read it) but it does not look a very heavy task to do. Maybe the need to enforce that country field before checkout... and I think it would help to boost MS-Suite sales in EU

What do you think, Leighton?

Latest news on this is I am working on building the functionality into the existing MS Tax module to allow you to specify different ratest depending on the company that was selected.

Sincerely,

Leighton Whiting

Sounds great. Would love it if you could add a link here when you post the video.