WooCommerce sending inc tax amount as ex tax amount

Your PayPal account has settings to add tax and shipping – ensure this is all disabled on paypal side.

Why would it only apply tax to 1 in every 15-20 orders? (It isn’t applying additional shipping charges)

Why, if I replicate the transaction, ordering the exact same information, does it not apply the tax when I go through to paypal?

Paypal said the exact same thing but it doesn’t make sense – if this setting was active, it would apply it to every transaction and it would absolutely, most certainly apply it to my transaction when I replicate the customer transaction precisely.

NOTE: I have gone through the logs, identified the browser and os the customer was using and followed the exact same path through the site, viewing and ordering the same things that they did. I also used their details to place the exact same location details on the order… But i can’t get it to do it again, no matter what I do!!!

Of the 100+ orders received in the past 5 days, this has occurred on perhaps 6-7 of the orders – there is no consistency in product, ordering location, amount… nothing…

Why would it only apply tax to 1 in every 15-20 orders? (It isn’t applying additional shipping charges)

Because it would be based on where the customer is located and PP may have additional checks their side based on the user logging in to pay.

If PayPal are telling you the same thing, then logically that is the issue.

That isn’t logically the issue. PayPal spent 30 seconds dealing with the issue and didn’t even bother checking logs.

Less likely a “logical answer” and more likely a “quick and easy answer” to avoid doing any actual work to investigate

Have to actually took the time to find the tax and shipping setup in your PayPal account yet? I’ve seen this cause it before – I’m not making it up.

I had the same problem. Taxes were enabled on paypal for me. I did not make this change but deleted the settings so hope it works correctly going forward.

This issue for me only happened recently prior transactions worked fine for me.

I’ve run into the same problem as well.

However, I’ve managed to find what the issue is. If I set the price of something to for example: 18.325 (so the price after tax would be 21.99), then it charges tax twice on PayPal. If I set it to 18.3249, then it works perfectly, and only charges tax once. I think WooCommerce doesn’t round prices the same way as PayPal does, so that’s might cause the issue.

I am having this issue now. In my case it seems to happen only when discount codes are used. Did you find a solution to your case?

Most transactions work fine. Woocommerce tells the customer what sales tax they are going to pay. When they make the transition to PayPal, the sales tax is correct there and the numbers match.

When a discount code is used, Woocommerce adds up the discounted amount plus the sales tax, and sends that number to PayPal as the product price. PayPal then adds sales tax to that, effectively double-taxing the customer. It is clearly a bug in Woocommerce.

I just became aware of this and am trying to find a solution. I don’t want to disable sales tax on either side because that creates other issues with accounting, and with setting customer expectations and then surprising them with extra cost when they get to PayPal, etc.

It is clearly a bug in Woocommerce.

How can it clearly be a bug in WooCommerce if its a tax being added on PayPal side? Taxes need to be disabled on the account.

It’s clearly a bug because the base cost of the product is being sent to Paypal incorrectly when a discount code is used, and NOT when there is no discount code.

If I disable tax in PayPal then WC and PayPal will not have matching numbers for accounting records. If disable tax in WC and let PayPal handle taxes that could work, but the customer will be told one amount during checkout and then have surprise sales tax added which might upset them.

When a transaction works perfectly without a discount code and double-taxes with a discount code, all other things being identical, then clearly it is a problem with how the information is being sent to PayPal.

I also have a feeling that it’s a bug in WooCommerce. I’m still fighting with this issue. I have 3 websites using the same PayPal account, 2 on Opencart, 1 on WooCommerce, and only the WooCommerce orders are double-charged for VAT.

For example, if I set a product to have a price of 18.325 (so it would be 21.99 with VAT), then it will double charge VAT. If I set it to 18.3249, then it charges VAT once, correctly. It must be because of a rounding error somewhere.

Here is what happens in my case. Below are two sets of data – one without a discount code, and one with the discount.

Without Discount Code:
WC Product price: $19.75
PP Product Price: $19.75
WC shows $3.14 shipping
PP shows $3.14 shipping
WC shows $1.70 sales tax
PP shows $1.70 sales tax
WC shows total cost $24.59
PP shows total cost $24.59

With Discount Code (5% off):
WC Product price: $18.76
PP Product Price: $20.38
[Note: 20.38 – 18.76 = 1.62]
WC shows $3.14 shipping
PP shows $3.14 shipping
WC shows $1.61 sales tax
PP shows $2.02 sales tax
WC shows total cost $23.52
PP shows total cost $25.54

How is that not a bug?

Why not enable logging and see what values actually get sent?

That’s a good idea. Do you have a link to a doc on how to do that?