I have come to the point when I must get this working as all my members are being charged VAT when most of my customers are in the US and don't need to pay it. I am in the UK. I have set EU rate in both aMember and PayPal. As far as I can see, the only proof of 'origin of payment' has to come from PayPal. I don't ask for an address in my signup as I am not delivering anything. Anyway, this would not be valid evidence of origin as far as UK VAT rules are concerned. I would like to know how it is handled by aMember. If aMember does not receive the information can anyone in the UK tell me how they are handling this? I use PayPal Standard I may of course be missing something obvious and have not set it up properly!
aMember has to know country of user before making payment to calculate tax. You have to drag "Address" brick into the form. You can click "configure" on the brick to disable all form fields but country.
Alex, yes I thought that would be the answer. I don't think the UK vat office would actually accept that if you asked them. It's not proof of origin just because the member says they come from outside the EU. I was hoping PayPal could detect origin and would send the information to aMember. I will though add country to my form and wait for the vat man to query it! Taking another angle on it, does anyone know how to tell payment origin from the downloaded history details from paypal.? If that is possible I could work out my vat liability outside of amember. Paypal never seem to give a straight answer to this question.
Angela, I believe that is how must websites work. You will get proof from PayPal, but it will happen after payment, and we need to add tax before payment! One possible solution is to enable tax calculation in Paypal account and disable in aMember. It needs testing but it worked for aMember v3.
Thank you Alex. Yes, I have just received a reply from PayPal and they pretty well suggest that the way aMember handle it is acceptable and common practice. I notice that the Country entered by the member is carried over to PayPal and is autofilled in the transaction which is reassuring. I was wondering if PayPal is clever enough to add vat back on if the member gives a country that does not match their EU PayPal account or credit card? Anyway, I'm going with this method. It is straightforward for the customer and nice and clear in aMember. Sorry if I raised an issue unnecessarily!
Just to tidy up this query. This is the reply I received from PayPal. So it certainly states that payment origin is taken from the customers PayPal account during their processing and I think if they pay by card it will take the billing address associated with the card. Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with this. aMember continues to satisfy all requirements! From PayPal: I understand from your previous correspondence that you have set up VAT to be charged via your "aMember" system and have an enquiry regarding how PayPal would charge VAT when a customer processes a payment from outside the country they have registered their PayPal account. I understand that you have a "Sign Up Facility" on your website where your customer enters their membership type, email address, country etc. and you were investigating whether the country that is used through this facility would have the VAT charged if it was different to the country on their customers PayPal account. PayPal will only charge VAT based on the address that the customer has shown in their PayPal account. If they are making a payment by their card, we will work it from the billing address they have used when processing their payment.