CbSubs urgent issue

Hello
I do have a bad situation here that needs urgent help.
I am using cbsubs for many years without any problems regarding to the VAT charge on every sale. All clients were paying the VAT of the seller country (Bulgaria).

Recently i was informed that because of the volume of sales, we have to to register our company under the special ONE STOP SHOP (OSS) regime in Bulgaria. According to this, we have to charge the customers with the VAT percentage of their own country.

And here comes the disaster!

According to posts here in the forum (we found nothing to this case in the cbsubs pdf), we created Geographic Zones, Tax Rules and Tax Rates for EU Countries...

and the result was to stop charging VAT to clients. This is illegal and we do not know how to deal with it.

Here are our settings:

CB Paid Subscriptions: General plugin settings
Default Customer Country: No default country
Default Customer State / Province: Select State / Province
Default Buyer Zip Code:
System Seller Country: Bulgaria
System Seller State / Province: Sofia
System Seller Zip Code: 1220


Geographic Zones
In the List of Geographic Zones there are all the EU countries plus...
European Union     Collection of EU Countries
USA     United States of America
Switzerland     Switzerland and Liechtenstein


Tax Rules
In the List of applicable tax rules there are all EU countries and Bulgaria is marked as Default.


Tax Rates
In the List of tax rates we have all the EU Countries...
Tax Rate Description: Description of each tax rate
Tax rate: The percentage of each Country
Tax priority: 1 on all records
Tax Rule: The rule created for each Country
Geographic Zone of Buyer: The zone created for each Country
Geographic Zone of Seller: ---
Applies inland: Bulgaria has "All". The other Countries are "No".
Applies to export: Bulgaria has "All". The other Countries are "B2C".
Applies in-state: Bulgaria has "All". The other Countries are "No".
Applies out-of-state: Bulgaria has "All". The other Countries are "No".
Published: Yes

Please help...

You'll need to make invoice address mandatory under Settings > Display > Invoices so CBSubs can do calculates based off buyer geographic location. Then all you should need to do is create Tax Rates with "Geographic Zone of Buyer" set to each of the VAT locations you need to specifically target.

So you'll likely need more geographic zones to filter by in "Geographic Zone of Buyer" to handle the different VATs that you're required to handle. Using your current 3 as an example you'd have 3 Tax Rates 1 for each Geographic Zone with the appropriate VAT %. If you had 5 Geographic Zones to cover you'd have 5 Tax Rates. You should only need 1 Tax Rule (probably named VAT or Sales Tax).

Thank you for your reply Krileon but...

You'll need to make invoice address mandatory under Settings > Display > Invoices so CBSubs can do calculates based off buyer geographic location.

When i make invoice address mandatory, i see a bunch of fields that are not needed in our case! Why do i have to make the clients fill name address, zip code, Company name etc? This will cause only confusion to my clients. We are trying to keep things simple!

Then all you should need to do is create Tax Rates with "Geographic Zone of Buyer" set to each of the VAT locations you need to specifically target.

We have created Tax Rates with "Geographic Zone of Buyer" for all european countries.

So you'll likely need more geographic zones to filter by in "Geographic Zone of Buyer" to handle the different VATs that you're required to handle.

We have one Geo zone for each EU country. What do you mean more?

Using your current 3 as an example you'd have 3 Tax Rates 1 for each Geographic Zone with the appropriate VAT %. If you had 5 Geographic Zones to cover you'd have 5 Tax Rates.

What are our current 3? If you mean Geographic Zones we do not have 3... we have 37.

You should only need 1 Tax Rule (probably named VAT or Sales Tax).

How will this Tax Rule be configured?

Can you please point me to the right tutorial, forum post, experienced coder that will fix things for us? I can not shut my site down till we find a solution through forum!


 

When i make invoice address mandatory, i see a bunch of fields that are not needed in our case! Why do i have to make the clients fill name address, zip code, Company name etc? This will cause only confusion to my clients. We are trying to keep things simple!

The address fields are to be able to geolocate properly. Company Name shouldn't be required as it's an optional field. I'm not sure how else we're meant to apply geolocation based tax without their location. If you've CB fields collecting this data already you can synchronize those fields to CB within CBSubs > Display > Invoices by selecting them from the respective dropdowns there.

We have created Tax Rates with "Geographic Zone of Buyer" for all european countries.

Then you shouldn't have any issues with it applying tax rates based off buyer location if they've filled out the invoice address fields.

We have one Geo zone for each EU country. What do you mean more? What are our current 3? If you mean Geographic Zones we do not have 3... we have 37.

If you have all the Geographic Zones supplied that you need then it's not necessary to create more.

How will this Tax Rule be configured?

Create 1 Tax Rule called "Sales Tax" or "VAT" or whatever you like really. Next create 37 Tax Rates that apply to that Tax Rule you created. Each Tax Rate should have "Geographic Zone of Buyer" selected for each of your Geographic Zone. This will give you unique tax rates per geographic zone for sales/vat tax. This will of course require them to fill out the invoice address otherwise we've no way of knowing where they are to properly adjust VAT based off location. Example as follows.

Tax Rule
Tax Rule Name (internal): VAT Tax
Short Code (visible on invoice): VAT
Default Tax Rule for plans: Yes

Tax Rate
Tax Rate in PERCENT (%): 5%
Short Description (visible on invoice): EU VAT
Tax rule to assign this tax to: VAT Tax
Geographic Zone of Buyer: European Union
Published: Yes

That would apply a 5% VAT to EU customers. You'll need 37 of those Tax Rates. 1 for each Geographic Zone. That should be all you need to do.

As a side note you can use CSS to hide any invoice address fields you don't want as long as they're not mandatory. So for example Company Name can be hidden if you don't do B2B (business to business) transactions. The below should work.

The following will hide Company Name and Phone Number for example. As neither are required this is safe to apply using CBs CSS override feature.

Thank you for your reply Krileon.
Unfortunately things do not seem to be good for me with the "invoice address mandatory".

On our usecase clients do not want to give any details. It is an adult community and their privacy is out of any question!

So as a workaround i thought of a way. Here is how...

1. cb_subs_inv_first_name: Set a default value in mysql instead of NULL like "Community" and hide it through css.
2. cb_subs_inv_last_name: Set a default value in mysql instead of NULL like "User" and hide it through css.
3. cb_subs_inv_address_street: : Set a default value in mysql instead of NULL and hide it through css.
4. cb_subs_inv_address_city: We can populate it from the profile field.
5. cb_subs_inv_address_state: We can populate it from the profile field.
6. cb_subs_inv_address_zip: Set a default value in mysql instead of NULL and hide it through css.
7. cb_subs_inv_address_country: We can populate it from the profile field.

This way they see the fields that they already see at their profiles.

Note that... The taxes applied to our sales are calculated by country... not by state or anything else. What is needed is the country.

Do you believe this could work, or it will cause problems elsewhere?

Thank you