New VAT rule as of January 1, 2015 in the European Union

New VAT rule on PrestaShop or thirty bees

As of January 1, 2015, if you are subject to VAT, the rules of application of VAT change on dematerialized products in the European Union.

Is set up, as such, the MOSS Gateway on which you will find all the information to know if you are concerned, but here is an excerpt to know:

As of January 1, 2015, the supply of telecommunication, broadcasting and television services as well as services delivered by electronic means will be taxable at the place of consumption when these services are supplied by taxable persons, established or not in the territory of the European Union (EU), to non-taxable persons ("consumers") having their domicile or habitual residence in the territory of the EU. The supply of electronic services will thus be taxable at the VAT rate in force in the Member State where the consumer is domiciled. The supplier will then have to declare and pay VAT in each Member State of consumption. A simplification of the declaration obligations is however foreseen with the implementation of a single electronic window.

So how to implement this new rule simply and easily?

Here is the explanation in example on the version 1.6 of PrestaShop

Creation of European taxes

Each country applies a different VAT depending on the product, but the principles are basically the same.

You will find the complete list of European VAT on this article.

In PrestaShop, go to the menu Localization >> Taxes

here you can add the taxes of each country you need, in my example I added the Belgian VAT which is 21%.

Of course I created this BE VAT by simply adding it using the + icon on the right of the window.

Application of the new taxes

PrestaShop uses tax rules to apply to each product. When you have already created your product catalog, it would be tedious to change the rules used by them, however, it seems mandatory to do so if your catalog consists of dematerialized products (on which the new rule applies) and non dematerialized products (which retains the old calculation rule). In the second case, it will be necessary to create a new tax rule and modify each product concerned to apply it.

So in the simple case where you only have dematerialized products, you just need to change the basic PrestaShop tax rule that you currently apply to your products. In my example, this will be the rule: Rule 20.000%.

So, I just need to modify it and for Belgium to add my new tax: VAT BE at 21%.

Now you have to repeat the steps to create all the taxes for each country and apply them properly.

B2B cases

If your site is also aimed at professional customers, you should know that this new rule does not apply to them if they have an Intra-Community VAT number and that this is indicated in their address.

For this to apply on PrestaShop, you need to install the module handling this.

And of course the configuration

Conclusion

The implementation of this new rule requires preparation, it is therefore preferable to test this implementation on a development store in order to avoid any concern for the future of your business.

Normally, this tutorial should be the same for PrestaShop versions 1.4 and 1.5, please let me know in comments if this is the case.

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