X-Cart forums

[Triple A Racing]

Originally Posted by phil_

Just to add some input regarding the shipping and tax zones. I too had issues with the UK VAT setup. I ended up getting custom modifications

We think that if chargeable Custom Modifications are required, purely in order to make UK VAT calculations and presentations work normally (and correctly), then it's time to change the e-commerce software supplier It's a standard UK business requirement, so this should always be included within the CORE software and/or a FOC Plugin / Module Item provided by all e-commerce software suppliers (assuming that they intend on having UK based Customers.....not all of them do, but X-Cart does...so...). The exception might be if your own store required required UK VAT itself, not to be processed in the usual way (store owner's own choice) well then that's different and chargeable Custom Modifications may possibly be the only option with an XC5 based store in that case, unless you are an accomplished programmer and have sufficient free time?

Originally Posted by phil_

The end result is that I can assign the set of countries belonging to the UK & EU which are assigned as a 'tax' zone, so the VAT calculation checks whether the shipping address country is on that tax zone list and then applies VAT accordingly. At the same time, I also have the various countries assigned in separate 'shipping' zones. So I can independently assign countries for shipping calculations. This enables me to have a simple shipping setup as UK, Europe and Worldwide shipping options, but at the same time takes into account the exceptions such as channel Islands, Norway etc. For example, Norway is part of mainland Europe, so my Europe shipping rate covers that zone (without me having to define a separate shipping option for that) but at the same time VAT is not applied

This section and your choice of setting it up this way, looks like it may be quite specific to your store? It obviously works well for you, which is good news, but we don't operate this way ourselves (different products / businesses etc maybe?). Norway, for example, is indeed in Europe. It's not in the EU but it is a member of EFTA etc so no UK VAT is normally charged on orders that are sent there (as you have stated) but, shipping charges to Norway are different than the rest of (EU) Europe, because of customs clearance charges that can be required. That's our own real life experience with Norway. We treat each Country separately for Taxes and Shipping and this works just fine for us. To be fair to X-Cart 5, the Countries, States, Zones / Taxes (the setup of them...) / Shipping etc were not the issues that we raised. The issues were UK VAT invoices being wrong (their display and initially, some calculations too, after a module upgrade - see other threads) plus most importantly, the removal of a standard CORE function (provided in XC4 but never reproduced in XC5) where it was possible (and very easy / simple) to make any user tax exempt, as detailed in our initial post.

Originally Posted by phil_

It seemed to me when setting up shipping and taxes, using the default X-Cart 5, that you were essentially restricted to defining a shipping zone that was also used to define its tax status. I think the approach I took with separating them is more flexible and might be a more useful option for all customers in X-Cart 5.3. It's already implemented on my site 5.2 site, so not much effort for X-Cart to lift it and merge that in for use in 5.3

As above. That's not the experience we ourselves have had (again different products / businesses etc maybe?) We have had no problems with interaction of Countries / Zones / Tax Status / Applied Taxes etc other than some careful / patient / specific verification testing during initial setup time. This side of things works okay for us. Unlike the items raised in our initial post!!!

Originally Posted by phil_

I also have various other fixes to make the VAT validation and calculation behave correctly. Again this already exists on my site. Of course I paid a lot to have these changes and fixes made, but I kept hitting a brick wall with X-Cart that there was default X-Cart behavior and I should pay to get things changed or fixed my way... I had a whole load of other changes and customisations done, which ended up taking an excruciating long time to accomplish, but best we don't go into that... anyway have a look at the site, I only went live a couple of weeks ago... https://www.prototools.co.uk, still various bits and pieces to tidy up, but you can see how the VAT is done on my setup

Ahhhh The famous "...X-Cart Custom Modification Projects? Yes just pay here first..." We have had two XC5 CM Projects done and paid for them. They were not related to UK VAT and were not simple, but the end results? Fine in fairness. But....we have NEVER had any CMP's carried out on the UK VAT Module itself and we never ever will! See the first part of this reply as to why!

Qualiteam / other UK based store owners however, may have very similar views to your own and nothing like ours, so yours is a good post and another basis of discussion