Configuring Tax Rates Per Country

Many online retailers are registered for VAT in countries other than the UK. This article explains how to configure Tradebox One to customise tax codes and set these per country.

Tradebox already classifies each order as UK, EU or Rest of World and applies a VAT rule, based on the shipping address of the order. (This may differ depending on whether you set up Tradebox before or after the end of the Brexit transition on 01/01/2021, if before, see here for our suggested changes to your set up.) This means you don't need to set up tax rules for every country you may ever ship to, only the ones in which you need a different, more specific tax treatment; normally this means only the non-UK countries in which you're VAT registered.

Creating a New Tax Rate

In Tradebox One go to Configuration and select the Tax Rates option. This displays the default tax rates in Tradebox One and the percentage each is set at.

To create a new tax rate click on the New button. Fill out the form, providing an identifiable name for the new tax rate and the percentage it operates at (see below). Then choose Save. If you need additional rates (such as tracking reduced-rate goods in a VAT-registered country), add one per additional tax treatment that applies to your business.

Setting the tax treatment per country

To apply the new tax code to a specific country, in the Configuration menu click on the Countries button. Scroll down until you find the country and double click on it. Set the appropriate tax code for Sales, Carriage and Other income.

Based upon this configuration, Tradebox One will allocate the new tax rate against all sales, carriage and other income on an order with a matching Shipping Country, i.e. in this example an order with a shipping address in Germany.

Mapping to your Accounts Package Tax Codes

If you do have an integration set up to an accounts package you will need to map the new Tradebox tax code to an existing accounts tax code. To do this, double-click on the sales channel in the Channels module and choose the Sage 50/Xero tab and then the Tax Codes tab. This will display all of the existing Tradebox tax codes and the mappings to the tax codes in the integrated accounts package (Sage 50 in this example). Double click on the new Tradebox tax code and choose the corresponding tax code from the integrated accounts package then choose Save.

By default, Tradebox will apply the new tax code to ALL products on orders that are shipped to the specified country. This includes products which may be marked as VAT exempt in your product list. It's worth noting that whilst a product may be VAT exempt in the UK (for example children's clothing or books) it does not necessarily mean that the same products are VAT exempt in the EU country you are VAT registered in. If you need to override this for any specific products shipped to the country in question, you can set a per-product-per-country tax treatment.

Applying a tax code per-product-per-country

To do this go to the Product module and double click on the Product Record then choose the Taxation tab. From the Actions menu in the bottom right choose Add Product Tax For Country.

Select the country you want to add the tax code for and the relevant tax code, then click Save.

If you have multiple product codes that you need to adjust, you can do this by importing a CSV file. To do that, go to Products within Tradebox, and then from the Actions menu choose Import Tax Codes Per Country.

You'll need a very simple CSV file of three columns to import product tax codes; the product SKU, the two letter country code, and the Tradebox tax code number. A sample file can be viewed by selecting the View Expected File Structure link within the import option itself.