How to Set Up VAT, Tax Location, and countries for Sales. Displaying VAT when the buyer is a business.
If you're using reteach to sell your courses, you can manage VAT accounting and country restrictions for sales with just a few settings.
Things to Keep in Mind
- The VAT rate is entered manually. If it changes in your country, it must be updated manually.
- You control whether prices in your academy are shown inclusive or exclusive of VAT through the price display settings.
- The tax location should correspond to your company's main office. reteach supports all EU countries and Switzerland as tax locations.
- If you want to customize the VAT label on invoices and price displays in the academy, you can do this with the "Umsatzsteueranwendung (Standard)" (VAT Application) setting.
Note that this setting establishes a default VAT application for your academy. However, if you have individual courses that require a different VAT application or are exempt from VAT, you can adjust this independently in the associated product for that specific course.
To do this, navigate to your products under "E-Commerce" in the left menu, then select the product for which the VAT application needs to be customized.
You can then individually adjust the Umsatzsteueranwendung (VAT application) (inclusive, exclusive, or exempt) for this product on the right side.
You can limit sales (and only sales) to specific countries using the field Länder für den Verkauf in your settings. The available options are:
- Germany (or the country of your tax location)
- EU
- EU & Switzerland
- All countries
VAT Accounting for Domestic and International Sales
reteach displays VAT as follows:
If the Buyer Is a Consumer
VAT is always displayed.
If the Buyer Is a Business
- If the buyer's country matches the tax location: VAT is displayed.
- If the buyer's country does NOT match the tax location:
- If the buyer's country is an EU country or Switzerland, the reverse charge mechanism is applied. VAT is not displayed in this case.
- If the buyer's country is outside the EU or not Switzerland, VAT is displayed.
Important: The buyer is treated as a business only if they provide their VAT ID during the purchase process or in their profile.
Additional Tips:
- If your business or activity is VAT-exempt and you generally do not display VAT, you can set the VAT application to "VAT exempt" by default. If individual courses are VAT-exempt, you can specify this individually in the product associated with the course as described above.
- For explanations or legal texts regarding (non-)display of VAT, you can use the default footer or notice in the invoice template settings.