Brexit – Update 2

As anticipated a couple of weeks ago, we have been working on an update for the EU VAT Assistant, aimed at handling the changes introduced by Brexit. The upcoming new major version of the EU VAT Assistant, numbered 2.x, will introduce some significant changes. Many of them should be transparent to users, as they apply to the elements that work “behind the scenes”, whereas others will be more noticeable.

Summary of changes
In a nutshell, the UK and the Isle of Man will no longer be handled by the EU VAT Assistant, out of the box. Due to that, the plugin won’t collect or validate handle UK VAT numbers. Such features will be implemented as a separate addon, which will be made available from our site.
You should still be able to use the sales reports. The EU VAT Assistant will keep collecting VAT information, such as the tax paid against each order by UK customers, and show them in the reports. You can use the “UK” entries in the report to file returns for the UK. If you need a GBP amount, you can converting it using the exchange rates from the HMRC VAT Exchange Rates. Although this might not be

Change log
You can find the details about the most important changes below.

Functional changes

1. The Settings page has been updated, as follows:
   1. The UK is no longer available from the list at VAT Number Validation > VIES Validation. The UK has left that system, therefore it’s no longer possible to enter a UK VAT number in field Requester country code for the VAT validation service. If you are a UK business, you can now empty that field.
   2. The page contains a new Services tab. The tab will be used to show the configuration settings for additional services, such as VAT number validators, which may be introduced by addons.
   3. The Options tab now includes a new Privacy section. We introduced an option to delete the data collected by the EU VAT Assistant when a customer asks to erase their personal data.
   4. The integration with the PDF Invoices & Packing Slips plugin now allows to tokens in the shop’s address field, which the EU VAT Assistant replaces with their corresponding value when an invoice is generated. At the moment, the only supported token is {{merchant_vat_number}}, which is replaced by the VIES Requester VAT number. Addons will be able to replace the value with their own, e.g. to show a UK VAT number when selling to UK customers.
2. The checkout page will no longer display the VAT number field for the UK or Isle of Man.
3. The EU VAT Assistant will no longer validate UK VAT numbers, as the EU VIES system won’t accept them anymore.

In the latest update, we also made some significant modifications to the EU VAT Assistant code. As always, we followed our policy of aiming for full backward compatibility, even after a major release. Our tests indicated that any custom code that followed our guidelines should keep working as it always did. If you, or your developers, wrote some custom code that is tightly coupled with the previous implementation, you might have to adapt it to the new version.

Below you can find a summary of what has changed in the code base.

Technical changes

1. We updated the embedded framework. We updated the Aelia Foundation Classes to version 2.1. The main change in the framework is an extended Settings API, whose features are closer to the one offered by WooCommerce. This will help developers familiar with one to write settings for the other.
2. We have rewritten the logic to validate VAT numbers, to make it more modular. This will allow to introduce new validators in the future, such as the one for UK VAT numbers.
3. We optimised frontend scripts. Many scripts have been rewritten in a clearer form, using TypeScript, to simplify maintenance. They are also smaller, and loaded only when needed, to improve performance.
4. We added a couple of new filters, related to the VAT number validation process. The filters allow 3rd parties and addons to determine if a VAT number should be required for specific countries.

Planned Brexit Addon
As anticipated, we are working on a “UK Addon for the EU VAT Assistant”, aimed at handling the aspects of Brexit. Note: due to the effort involved in such development, as well as the costs brought in by the maintenance of the EU VAT Assistant, the addon will be exclusively a paid product.

The full feature set of the UK Addon is still being defined, as we receive more information from the UK Revenue office. Among the planned features are the following:

1. Handling and validation of UK VAT numbers. We’re planning to support both the HMRC VAT Number Validation API and Vatlayer.
   Note: both services require authentication credentials.
   1. The process to obtain the credentials for HRMC API requires a couple of steps. We spent days explaining them that the VAT number validation service should be public and open to anyone, like the EU VIES service is, but they simply replied that “they do things their own way”. Unfortunately, we can’t speed up the process ourselves, therefore we would recommend to register for their service as soon as possible, so that you can complete the steps to obtain the production credentials to use on your site.
   2. Vatlayer is a 3rd party service that offers the possibility to validate VAT numbers. We contacted them to confirm that their service will support the validation of UK VAT numbers, and they replied that this is their target. They offers both a free plan and paid plans. The free plan offers 100 API calls a month, which are not many, but they could be used while you wait for the HMRC to send you the production credentials for their API.
2. Showing the UK VAT number on invoices to UK customer. The addon will hook into the PDF Invoices & Packing Slips integration, to replace the {{merchant_vat_number}} token automatically.
3. Blocking sales to UK customers who don’t have a valid VAT number. This can be useful if you don’t have a UK VAT number, which is required to charge VAT to consumers resident in the UK.

More features may be added, as the new regulations become clearer over time.

If you have any questions, please post them in this support section and we will answer you soon as possible. Thanks.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Diego. Reason: Fixed formatting of lists