FAQ – Multiple base countries for VAT calculations

Question
EU regulations indicate that a merchant is required to register for VAT in all countries where they hold stock, or when they reach a specific threshold of sales in those countries. In such case, the merchant is required to charge VAT at the rate applicable in those countries, as if they were domestic sales, even for customers with a valid VAT number.

Is it possible to set multiple “base countries” for VAT purposes, so that the VAT is always applied no matter if the customer has a valid VAT number or not?

Answer
The EU VAT Assistant was designed for compliance with the VAT MOSS regulations and doesn’t cover this specific scenario, out of the box.

It should still be possible to achieve the result described, with a filter to disable the VAT exemption when the customer is in specific countries (e.g. Spain, France, Germany), regardless of the result of the VAT number validation. The logic would be “if customer’s country is ES, FR or DE, disable VAT exemption” and can be implemented by writing a filter for hook wc_aelia_eu_vat_assistant_customer_vat_exemption. Example:

add_filters('wc_aelia_eu_vat_assistant_customer_vat_exemption', function($customer_vat_exemption, $vat_country, $vat_number, $vat_number_validated, $raw_vat_validation_response) {
  // Disable the VAT exemption for customers from Spain, France and Germany
  if($customer_vat_exemption && in_array($vat_country, array('ES', 'FR', 'DE'))) {
    $customer_vat_exemption = false;
  }

  return $customer_vat_exemption;
}, 10, 5);

The result will be that customers from countries in your list will always be charged VAT, whether they enter a valid EU VAT number or not.

Important notes
– The above code is an example,provided free of charge, as is, without guarantees, and it’s outside the scope of our support service. You will have to add your custom logic to skip the VAT exemption for specific countries, before using it. If you need assistance implementing this customisation, you can use the following link to request a consultation: https://aelia.co/hire_us.
– The filter will disable the VAT exemption for specific countries, but it won’t affect reports. For example, the EU VAT by Country report will consider “domestic sales” the ones from customers in your shop’s base country. For example, if your shop is based in Spain, the report will show sales to Spain when run with the “domestic sales” option enabled. Other countries (France and Germany, in the example) will appear in the VAT MOSS report.