If you’re a VAT-registered business based in the European Union, you are most likely required to pay value-added tax (VAT). You can set up your store according to the EU VAT rules:
- Charge VAT to your customers
- Apply reverse charge when selling to another EU VAT registered business
- Display your VAT ID number on invoices
You can use automatic tax settings to calculate the tax rates automatically based on the store and customer's location and include VAT into product prices.
These tax settings use the most current general sales tax rates. At checkout, the customer will be charged the proper VAT rate according to the country and regional tax rules.
To enable automatic tax rates, visit this tutorial: Setting up taxes.
Only standard VAT rates are supported by the automatic calculation method at the moment. If you are required to charge a reduced rate or have zero-rated products in your store, disable the automatic rates and set up manual tax rates instead.
Note: You may need to switch to manual tax calculations if your primary business address is located in a non-EU country.
Generating tax invoices
You can generate tax invoices in your store using the default invoice template. The default invoice meets the standard invoicing requirements. You can preview it in your dashboard, go to Settings > Invoice.
After shipping products to a buyer, you can get a printed copy of the order to send to your customer as an invoice.
To get a printed copy of an order:
- In your dashboard, go to My Sales > Orders.
- Find the order in the order list.
- Click Print Invoice next to the order. You will see the print dialog and can choose to print the invoice or to save an invoice as a PDF file.
If you want to automatically send out such copies to your customers, you can attach invoices to the Order Confirmation email notifications that your store sends upon order placements. To do this, enable the Attach invoices to Order Confirmation email option in your store admin, go to Settings > Invoice:
Note that the Generate invoices upon order placement option should also be enabled.
You may have some specific requirements for invoicing and/or you could already be making invoices separately, for example, in your accounting system or manually using Excel.
In this case, go to Settings > Invoice and turn off the automatic invoice generation by disabling the Generate invoices upon order placement:
As a result, invoices won’t appear in your dashboard nor they will be visible to your customers.
Displaying the VAT ID on the order invoice
You can enter the taxpayer identification number of your business so that it will be displayed on the invoice.
To add your VAT ID to the invoice:
- From your Online Store dashboard, go to your Settings > Invoice.
- Scroll down to the Taxpayer identification number section and click Edit.
- Insert the VAT ID to the editable field and Save changes.
Once added, the VAT ID number will be included in the information portion on all customer invoices:
The VAT ID number will also be added to all email notifications sent to your customers.
This feature is available on all Online Store plans.
Other helpful articles
Setting up taxes in your Online Store