Hi all. I’ve asked Mike, but he, seemed confused by the whole EU VAT law on digital downloads. In their promo stuff, Rapid cart Pro says it will handle the VAT laws so we don’t need to worry about it, so I suppose what I’m asking is if it’s all handled by Paypal or if it’s within 4Square’s coding.
Any advice is appreciated.
VAT Reporting for the EU is something the store plugin itself (or service) may not handle, and your payment processor may also (or may not) handle.
From the plugin (and I haven’t used it, perhaps @gibo can comment?) it looks as though the tax rates are auto-applied for you. But I suspect reporting (and remitting) that VAT is still your responsibility. We use Fastspring for our store - they handle the tax (legally, they’re a reseller on our behalf, and the merchant of record), but Stripe for example, simply processes payments (and that’s it).
—Nik
Hi Nick, thanks for that. I fill in my own tax returns and have occasional sales at the moment, mainly to uk customers, so I have no issue putting these sales in the VAT return that I submit. I really want to know If I have a choice of getting Payloom or Rapidcart Pro, or due to the VAT rates issue for digital downloads, have I only really got one option?
Thanks for replying.
RapidCart Pro can’t file your tax report (yet), but it’s fully compliant with EU VAT laws and German ecommerce law.
During checkout correct VAT rate is applied depending on customer type (company or private citizen) and home country (EU, non-EU).
Our own store is made with RapidCart Pro. You may ask @rob or open a ticket on our support site for further info.
Check out FastSpring. No RW integration, but comply fully with EU VAT.
I’m just about to launch my site in a day or so with FastSpring and they have been very helpful. Other options would be Paddle or Gumroad. They will all handle the VAT side.
And handle writing the invoices.
Yes they will basically take care of everything. There is a charge of course for each transaction but all billing companies charge including PayPal. I think it’s important not just to look at what they cost but also what they offer.
Yes, FastSpring seems to be one of the few complete solutions for complying with daft EU rules. @gibo – does RapidCart Pro also apply different VAT rates according to which EU country the purchaser is in? It needs to do this if it is to fully comply with the new laws. It also need to collect proof of this from purchasers. In other words, EU e-commerce laws are completely unworkable!
Does cartloom/ payloom do also?
Mike is not confused about VAT 
Cartloom supports VAT calculation and reporting. It does not submit VAT payments for the vendor.
Sorry Mike, I hope that I didn’t sound insulting, it’s just you didn’t reply to the previous thread. Will Payloom apply the appropriate VAT rate depending on the country as Rapidcart does?
Regards
Barrie
@Bazza Are you referring to Payloom 3 or Cartloom?
Cartloom handles it very well, but Payloom 3 is pretty limited. Feel free to download the free demo of Payloom 3 and test it out before buying the plugin to be sure it does what you want.
@yabdab Payloom 3 Pro. I don’t want the monthly fee. I don’t expect a plugin to handle my VAT returns, but I do need it to comply with EU VAT laws. Rapid cart Pro says it takes care of this; I just want to know if Payloom does the same.
I plan on buying one of the two plug ins and like the fact that Payloom doesn’t make you sign up to Amazon S3 for digital downloads. On the other hand, 4Square are explicit in saying their plug in is fully compliant with EU VAT law. If you can say the same, you have a sale, but you seem reluctant to do so. I’m convinced that this will be relevant to a lot of guys in the EU, so I’m sure it will be worth your while to give a definitive yes or no. If the answer is no, I’d recommend you look at adding this to the feature request list.
Regards
Barrie
Currently Payloom alone will not calculate different tax rates based on the customer’s location. Payloom can only offer a static tax about per item purchased.
If you use PayPal as your checkout processor, then you can set up tax rules on their website to handle tax rates .
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/Marketing/shipping/EasyCalculateShipAndTax-outside
Payloom does offer the ability to display the product price with taxes included.
Hope this helps 
We suggest this workaround to RapidCart 3 users as well. But unfortunately PayPal doesn’t handle VAT exemption for EU companies outside your own EU country.
As an European company, we are subjected to these regulations and experienced the issue in the past.
This is why we created our own fully compliant tax calculation system in RapidCart Pro.