How do I collect a VAT registration number?

#1

I have just purchased S2 Member Pro for my B2B site. I have successfully set VAT rates of 20% for GB and 0% for the rest of the world.

For audit purposes I must collect the customer’s VAT number as part of the payment transaction (GB=20%, not GB = 0%). I have read the Stripe docs and it supports sending it. How do I collect it and send it?

#2

Hi James.

You could create a required custom profile field for the VAT number, so he has to fill it out during signup. That way you have the number for your accounting. WP Admin > s2Member > General Options > Registration / Profile Fields

Would that help? :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks Cristian, I have now spent a day on this and I think that S2Member ProForms are no longer fit for purpose in the EU. The problem is that the EU tax VAT regime has become very complicated as a result of an effort to reduce tax avoidance by Amazon and Google.

To simplify at bit, I am in the UK and (at the moment) in the EU.

  • If my customer is a business
    ** if they are in the UK = charge 20% VAT
    ** if they are in the EU collect their VAT number and charge 0% VAT

  • If they are a natural person
    ** if they are in the UK charge 20% VAT
    ** if they are in the EU charge VAT at their home territory rate (eg Spain = 21%) (VATMOSS)

When I sell to the business I must also issue a VAT invoice in the legally prescribed format and report my sales to the authorities every quarter. When I sell to the EU citizen I must report my sales using a different system to all EU tax authorities.

MemberPress has addressed this issue by creating their own VATMOSS module and integrating with Avalara for the US.

I know that you are looking at the future of s2Member. I suggest that the content restriction facilities are the best in the market. It is greatly liked by developers because of the clarity of the documentation and implementation.

I think that the complexity of charging means that the shopping cart functionality needs to be implemented by an integration. The customer offer will then be.

s2Member Pro - Control Content and Charge the right amount
s2Member already delivers the best content control. s2Member Pro capabilities and shortcodes improves that futher. Our built in tax tables help you sell in the USA and our 3rd party integrations will help you be compliant when selling globally to the EU (both B2B and B2C VATMOSS).

Next Steps
Today I will be looking at ChargeBee which is free for startups.
*https://www.chargebee.com/

Plea for help!
If any other community members recognise this problem and have any contributions to share I would be very grateful.
James

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#4

Thanks for explaining. Yes, I see they’ve made it quite complex.

With s2Member you can customize the tax applied based on location, but it doesn’t include getting the customer’s VAT number. And I guess it also needs to recognize if it’s a business or an individual. Would these be all that’s missing for it to work for you?

I plan to improve s2’s checkout very much, from it’s own payment form/cart, to integrating with more services, but these will happen a bit ahead in the future.

#5

Thanks Cristian,
Well, I spent the day chatting with ChargeBee and Stripe support but I have just bought MemberPress for testing.

It sounds simple enough -

  1. charge the right taxes,
  2. collect the required audit information (customer location, card origin, IP, Address…)
  3. issue a correct invoice.
  4. Then create/update the user in WordPress.

However each step is very complex in the global context. If you are just selling to citizens in your own country then s2Member can do it. As soon as you go cross border then you need to understand and implement the rules.

You also have to collect the right information such as customer location and credit card origin so you have to use Stripe or a value added provided.

This is why ChargeBee exists, it also produces very nice invoices and give the user a subscription dashboard. It is free upto £50k transactions. However they don’t have any support for WordPress so I gave up. They might even pay you to do an integration. Their amazing shopping cart + your s2Member plugin would be really nice.

The nice man at Stripe support explained that by using undocumented features I could make their invoices tax compliant so that was a step forward :>

MemberPress promise that their tax module works well and offer a 10-day money back guarantee so I am going to try that. I have not used it before but it has a hell-of-a-lot of integrations. s2Member cannot compete against it head-on.

I will update this thread as I learn more.
James

1 Like
#6

Thanks for the update, James. I hope that works for you. :slight_smile:

I will look at ChargeBee. Thanks for the suggestion!