1.1.2015 – EU MOSS VAT Change Compliance

  • Hi everyone. This topic concerns any company or individual who sells any kind of digital service to EU customers. So this also applies (at least in theory – because enforceability is not yet known)to non EU residents/companies selling any non hardware good to the EU.

    So far for digital services – the location of the company in B2C trade was the determining factor on the VAT rate. Now for any transaction it will be based on the location of the customer.
    The location needs to be proofed by TWO independent factors. For s2member and paypal this would mean e.g. IP address conforms with the country of the payment address in the paypal profile. Other possibilities would be if there could be an obligatory country field for the customer to enter – and that matches the IP. Or landline (not mobile!) telephone number country code matches address or IP.

    It will be illegal to sell any e-services (such as a membership) to EU customers without before knowing if a) they are private or business customer b) have 2 independant (as given above) non conflicting factors to determine their location.

    This really needs to be checked by s2member.

    Also there would be a need to block people from some EU countries (e.g. Poland) who have invoice regulations that are so complicated that I cannot conduct business with Polish customers anymore – as any sale would mean a loss to me due to administration overhead.

    So s2member should block customers from country XX to checkout.

    Of course while in theory any non EU company/private selling e.g. a membership for a site to people in the EU (also to tourists traveling through the EU!!!!) – it will be difficult to enforce for EU bodies. They did announce however to specifically work together with US law enforcement agencies to get US companies to comply and use spiders/bots to track this down.

    The best resource about the changes I have found here:
    https://www.taxamo.com/blog/

    But basically if s2member is not able to follow the law here, dropping Paypal, Stripe or any other payment gateway that does not follow the law is the only solution. So far only markets such as the Apple Appstore, Google Play or Amazon marketplace take over that tax/invoice work.

    And I know even less what to do with all subscriptions. Probably I will have to cancel them all and ask to reapply under new EU terms.

    Basically if there are no easy solutions, my business is ruined.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/s2member/

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 41 total)
  • Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Oh true – here is the plugin:
    https://www.lyquidity.com/wpstore/2013/10/vat-for-edd/

    Well – it would be great if someone could build such a plugin for S2member. Because this is absolutely essential for any membership site worldwide – if the ever have a EU based customer (or even US/whatever visitor being in EU on vacation).

    I did not realize reading it that the plugin actually takes care of it already accordingly.

    Well, I’d suggest starting another thread for that so that it is clear what you are asking for, and perhaps direct potential coders to this page for some ideas on where to start: https://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/eu-vat/

    You could contact krumch directly, perhaps, here or, perhaps, Johnathon Williams here.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Oh great – didn’t find that EU VAT thread before – Otherwise I would have added this topic to it. That’s very helpful. Well I also contacted the VAT plugin coders for EDD and asked them for help. (wouldn’t mind moving away from s2member knowing that any kind of EU regulations don’t seem to matter to s2member coders/company).

    s2renewal reminders I’m using already. Great plugin (though could have some more options about old users – I was in contact with the coder but than lost track as it was a very busy period).

    If you’re taking me as representative of s2Member’s devs, then you shouldn’t. I have no connection with them except as a user, and have no idea of their view of EU regulations.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Oh I know – but it’s too bad. s2member is too cheap simply said – and lifelong licences not a good idea at all. Both EDD and WooCommerce are much more expensive – but they do have support and I guess for WooCommerce there are also some EU VAT solutions readily built?

    So maybe my buest guess is to hire someone to port my site to EDD?

    I just need to check carefully if EDD can really satisfy my needs. If I pay 400-500 USD/€ a year on licenses – then that’s fine if there are no grave problems as right now with s2member. (for me mainly no resume support on protected downloads served from own server – and no EU VAT handling – plus long time promised new features never to arrive)

    lifelong licences not a good idea at all

    That may be true often, but “at all”? You do know that StudioPress, of Genesis framework fame, sells its products on such a basis, don’t you?

    But you have to go with what suits you best. That’s what I always advocate. For me, that’s s2Member by such a big margin these days that I can hardly believe it. But then I am sure I’m doing different things with my sites from what you are doing with yours.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Yes – s2member is terrific value and can do lots of things. But IMHO you better be able to code yourself very well – in order to get missing features. Also no more direct support since they shut down their own forum – and also no offers like pay for 15min support time or similar to help you out properly.

    Well and I’m sure they won’t implement the EU VAT regulation – even though they themselves would actually very much need to comply to. S2member does fall under the EU VAT rules. (but yeah – so far no-one knows how the EU cracks down on foreign companies)

    It’s just crazy that some really essential features – like renewal reminders – are not part of core – or offered a longer time as a plugin (the plugin is great – but doesn’t exist very long yet).

    Also e.g. no buttons where you can have a dropdown with different price for different period. I needed to pay a developer to do that for me
    (e.g. 10€ 1year, 20€ 3 years, 30€ years).

    And well – like all membership plugins missing sofort.com / Sofortüberweisung as gateway – but that’s a german special so not to be expected somewhere else.

    Also no proper tutorial about how to setup paypal express payments for EU non UK users – where Paypal Payments pro is not available. Essentially there is no need to get s2member pro if you live in Germany or Austria.

    And lots of config that takes deep knowledge to be done. In essence s2member is great for me – but it’s the little things above that really drive me away.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Of just noted that EDD has a sofort.com plugin. So that seals the deal for me if there is any way to get my users from s2member seamless into EDD.

    I agree that s2member comes under VAT EU rules, though (as you say) I’m not sure what the EU can do about it if it doesn’t comply. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see some special EU-US agreement on that anyway.

    I also agree that it would be good if there were guidance on certain setups for outside North America. But then again, that’s also for users to help one another with.

    So far as the rest of what you say is concerned, I don’t really agree. For a start, I can’t code to save my life, but I run some pretty complex sites with it. I just read the instructions, which I find actually rather good.

    As for missing “really essential features”: well, you can’t have it both ways! If you want another feature, you can get an add-on, like s2renewal reminders. That’s how EDD does it, for example, so what’s the problem in s2 doing it like that, especially since you say that s2 is so cheap anyway?

    Similarly, you can add a lot of functionality by hooking into functions and filters, as well as by adding mu-plugins. You can certainly get a developer to do this, but I have found Google to be a great friend in this regard.

    Oh, and having recently tested it against another membership plugin for a new site I’m building, I can say that s2 is insanely fast when paired with Quick Cache Pro (by the same devs). I doubt another membership plugin can get near it, because they can’t cache at all. The one I compared it with looked like a donkey in the Kentucky Derby.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    I dropped Quick Cache (non Pro) after it once really really badly crashed my site on an update. That was only partly Quick Cache problem – but I was just to afraid about it happening again – and switched to W3 Total Cache – which made my site a tiny bit faster compared to Quick Cache. I cannot compare with Quick Cache Pro however.

    About other plugins not being compatible with Caching plugins – I haven’t heard so yet. But knowing W3 Total Cache is the most used caching plugin right now – I do hope WooCommerce or EDD do make sure their plugins are compatible with W3TC.
    About them being slow in general – I haven’t tried out yet. I have already one insanely slow plugin – qtranslate – but difficult to get rid of it and no good alternatives exist.. At least it plays well with all sort of themes or plugins.

    So knowing that, I rather overpay for hosting (meaning 32GB RAM root server with i7 idling along all day – well need about 20TB traffic a month anyhow so shared hosters / hosting platforms won’t like me as customer in any case or overcharge me) than being constrained by slow hosting.

    With my server so overpowered – I could actually without much speed problems at all ditch caching anyhow – but prefer to keep it for SEO/W3C compliance.

    For Stripe – I also found this solution now: https://quaderno.io/stripe-vat-invoicing/
    Well at least that’s easy to implement and not too expensive (though more expensive than buying a plugin of course). They told me they are working on Paypal too – but no ETA yet and not sure if possible. They wrote me back that they are prepared for 1.1.2015 and will change without any interaction needed.

    Still to bad – that in my country Stripe is not available yet. (and neither is Amazon Payments – who absolutely dump payment prices in Germany). Amazon Payments would be really my N1° provider if they are properly integrated.

    Wow, that Quaderno is a great find! Thanks for sharing!

    Interestingly, every time I have tried W3TC, it has crashed my site! And it can’t cache logged-in users anyway.

    But I agree that having a good hosting setup is the way to go. Mine is also overpowered for my needs: all SSDs, etc. But it’s blazing fast too.

    I guess for WooCommerce there are also some EU VAT solutions readily built?

    There are now – these are, I believe, the only solutions currently available:

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/woocommerce-eu-vat-compliance/ (free version)
    https://www.simbahosting.co.uk/s3/product/woocommerce-eu-vat-compliance/ (Premium version)

    David

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Well as it stands now – I will use vatapi.com and stick to s2member (for now) – but if anyone tells me a decent way how to switch over to WooCommerce (seems to be more reliable and more used than EDD for now) – then I’m saying goodbye to s2member… S2member was great a couple of years ago, but it simply doesn’t do it anymore and the promised new version will probably never appear.

    Thread Starter extremecarver

    (@extremecarver)

    Oh yeah – I will make the code available for vatapi.com integration (that’s a mid 4 digit figure worth of programming – or at least that’s what I pay for integration).

    @extremecarver Are you still working on this project?

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 41 total)
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