Use of the EuVat Module

VAT regulations for eCommerce within the member countries of the European Union may require to educate yourself before starting to configure EuVat for your Shop. Here are some sites highly recommended for your self-education:

• VIES VAT Number validation
• VIES Service Disclaimer
• VIES Frequently Asked Questions
• European Commission Taxation and Customs Union - VAT and eCommerce

Please understand that EuVat is limited to providing a set of functions allowing to automatically differentiate customers based on their Country of Address and Taxvat Number. Anything else related to applicable Tax Rates for different Customer Groups or Customer Tax Classes is fully the responsibility of the Magento Shop Owner or Developer and has nothing to do with the EuVat Extension and its functions.

EuVat itself is not making any tax calculations. It does only create a classification for each customer account into 4 different groups (or classes). Based on these groups (or classes) you may set your Shops Tax Calculation Rules to either calculate VAT, excempt from VAT or calculate any other Tax amount.

Customers are differentiated by EuVat by applying following rules:

1. Any customer providing a EU VAT number of the Stores Default Country or having a Billing Address that is within the Stores Default Country is assigned to the Customer Group (or Tax Class) 'Business and Consumer of Tax Default Country'.
2. Any customer providing a valid EU VAT number (valid as per the VIES Service) and a Billing Address that is within the EU is assigned to the Customer Group (or Tax Class) for 'EU Businesses with valid VAT'.
3. Any customer providing a Billing Address that is within the EU and none or a invalid EU VAT number, is assigned to the Customer Group (or Tax Class) for 'EU Consumer'.
4. Any customer providing a Billing Address that is outside of the EU is assigned to the Customer Group (or Tax Class) for 'Non-EU Customers'.

This differentiation is always related to the Country of the Primary (or Default) Billing Address. For any customer account where there is no Billing Address then the Country is being tried to be determined by the VAT Number. The configuration option 'Determine VAT Status during Checkout' allows to override this Billing Address oriented selection by the Shipping Address during Checkout if set so.

This module uses the EU VIES VAT ID Validation Service to verify the correctness of a EU VAT ID provided. Usage restrictions apply to the EU VIES Service as documented here: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/help.html

Violation of the EU VIES usage restrictions may lead to the stores IP-Address to be blocked for further API Requests. Please use these configuration options to reduce the API requests to the EU VIES to a minimum:

• Timeout for Validations with EU VIES
• Retries for Validations with EU VIES
• Interval for Retries with EU VIES
• Lifetime for Validations with EU VIES

If at registration of a new Customer Account, and there is a incorrect or invalid EU VAT ID Number entered, the registration will still take place. However that particular customer account will not get assigned as EU Business with valid VAT. If the address is within the EU such account is being assigned as EU Consumer, for addresses outside the EU such account is being assigned as Non-EU Customers.

To change this behaviour, and block registration of new customers with a EU VAT Number that did verify incorrect, you need to perform the changes described in Limit creation of new customer accounts to valid EU Businesses. You may leave the related configuration option at No to allow registration of Non-EU Business customers.

See also this related FAQ Entry here for more on this...

Install the extension as described here...

EuVAT has some of the core functions introduced with Magento 1.7 in regards to EU VAT handling already implemented since its first release. The following configuration settings should be set to prevent the Magento core functions to conflict with the EuVAT functionality:

Magento 1.7+: System » Configuration » Customer Configuration » Create New Account Options
Magento 2.1+: Stores » Configuration » Customer Configuration » Create New Account Options

• Set Enable Automatic Assignment to Customer Group to No to prevent Magneto to assign customer groups, especially if you plan to use Customer Tax Classes for your EuVAT configuration.
• Set Default Group to the Customer Group created for the customers of your stores home country, if you plan to use Customer Tax Classes for your EuVAT configuration set it to the default customer group you want to use in your store.
• Set Default Value for Disable Automatic Group Changes Based on VAT ID to Yes, EuVAT has its own option for this in the Customer Account page.

In your Stores configuration you may need to enable the Customer Account Tax/VAT field. Set Show Tax/VAT number to either optional or required as per your requirements.

System » Configuration » Customer Configuration » Name and Address Options

Alternatively to the Customer Account Tax/VAT input field known from Magento 1.9, on Magento 2.1 you may use the Customer Address EU VAT ID input field for the EU VAT Identification Number.

If your store has been upgraded from Magento 1 and the EU VAT ID is still stored in the Customer Tax/VAT field, you have configured the extension to use the Customer Address EU VAT ID it will take the EU VAT ID from the Customers Account Tax/VAT info if there is no EU VAT ID present in the Customer Address data.

To use the Customer Address VAT ID in Stores » Configuration » Customer Configuration » Create New Account Options set the option Show VAT Number on Storefront to Yes:

As consequence disable the Customer Account Tax/VAT input field:

Stores » Configuration » Customer Configuration » Name and Address Options: Set Show Tax/VAT Number to No

Option 1: You may use EuVat with Customer Groups, such that EuVat is assigning customers to customer groups which then are assigned to respective Tax Classes to control the VAT calculation.

Continue on here if you want to use this EuVat behaviour...

Option 2: You may use EuVat with Customer Tax Classes, such that EuVat is assigning a tax class to your customers to control the VAT calculation.

Continue on here if you want to use this EuVat behaviour...

You need to set the Tax Calculation to be based upon the Billing Address or Shipping Address depending on the Tax Regulations your store needs to follow, so that Magento is using the Tax Rate according to the customers Account and Billing or Shipping Country:

Magento 1.3+: System » Configuration » Tax
Magento 2.1+: Stores » Configuration » Tax



And define your Stores Default Tax Country to allow adding of VAT for all customers inside of this country. This will also be the VAT Rate shown to Guest Users:

Now with the above prerequisites in place, you now may configure the EuVat Module to automatically assign customers to the different Customer Groups, to have the Tax Calculation differentiated on their Account Address:

Magento 1.3+: System » Configuration » Sales » Tax
Magento 2.1+: Stores » Configuration » Sales » Tax

Set this to 'Yes' to perform automatic assignment of customers to the different Customer Groups, and with to the related Tax Groups.

Optional. Enter your own EU VAT Identification here, EuVat will then check all Tax/VAT Id's against it to ensure that no customer is using your own EU VAT Identification in false for his account.

Allows to verify if a new Customer Account has a EU VAT-ID that is already used by another Customer Account. Use this to prevent customer to register a account where the related EU VAT-ID is already used by an existing account.

In case a Customer tries to register with an EU VAT-ID already in use by another Customer Account the options on the Store Frontend are:

• Show Message to only display a message that the EU VAT-ID is already in use by another customer account.
• Redirect to Login Page will show the related message and redirect the customer to the Login Page to allow login to the existing account.

If set to Yes will show the full Address form on the Customer Registration page (if implemented on the related template block).

Allows to set the input of the EU VAT-ID on the Customer Address form to either Optional or Required depending on your preferences.

Also set Customers » Customer Configuration » Create New Account Options » Show VAT Number on Storefront to Yes to show the related EU VAT-ID form field.

Allows to change the Sort Order of the Customer Address form on the Registration Page and the Magento Checkout Page to your liking. Use the format field_id=sort_order and one entry per line:

Allows you to control how the EU VAT-ID is shown or hidden depending on the selected Customer Address Country:

• Show for all Address Countries: The EU VAT-ID form field is shown for all address countries
• Show only for EU Address Countries: The EU VAT-ID form field is shown for EU address countries, hidden for all others
• Show only for EU Address Countries and hide for Tax Default Country: The EU VAT-ID form field is shown for EU address countries, hidden the Tax Default Country and all other countries

Set this to 'Yes' to show a Drop-Down Selector for the EU Member Country at the VAT-Number form field, and to have the related Prefix for the VAT-Number be inserted into the form field for the country selected:

Allows to set the EU VAT-ID input field to be set to disabled (the EU VAT-ID form field is shown with the entered EU VAT-ID but disabled for editing) if a valid EU VAT-ID is present on the Customer Account.

Setting this to Yes will waive any validation on the VAT number in case the customer is identified as being in the default country. In case a customer is using the “Validate” function of the VAT number input field, a message saying that the VAT validation is waived is shown instead of the standard validation messages of that input field.

Set this to No if you want that invalid EU VAT-ID's are not saved with the Customer Account. Per default any entered EU VAT-ID is stored with the Customer Account, regardless if it did validate or not.

Setting this to Yes will perform a check if the VAT-ID does match the selected Billing (or Shipping) Address Country. If the VAT-ID prefix does not match the country code, then the validation of the VAT-ID will fail.

This configuration option allows to set the VAT-ID Input field (please note: we use the Customer Tax/VAT field for this, and this does not apply to the Address VAT-ID field) as required for the Billing Address Countries selected in the country list.

This configuration option works on combination with System » Config » Customers Configuration » Name and Address Option » Show Tax/VAT Number:

• With having the Customer Tax/VAT field set to Optional the EU VAT-ID will be required for the selected EU Countries as the Address Country, and optional for all other EU Countries.
• With having the Customer Tax/VAT field set to Required the EU VAT-ID input field will be shown and required for the selected Address Country, and the input field will be hidden for all other Address Countries.

This works as described for Magento 1.3 - 1.9 above the same way with following changes or additions:

• Also the Customer Address VAT-ID form field supports this.
• With having the configuration option VAT-ID required with Address Fields above set to Optional the EU VAT-ID will be required for the selected EU Countries as the Address Country, and optional for all other Address Countries.
• With having the configuration option VAT-ID required with Address Fields above set to Required the EU VAT-ID input field will be shown and required for all Address Countries.

If set to Yes any EU VAT-ID on the customer account will be disregarded if the Tax Calculation is set to Shipping Address for the store. This allows to treat EU Business Customers as EU Consumer Customers if your store is set to calculate the VAT based on the Shipping Address.

Allows to limit the registration of new customer accounts to only such that are identified as valid EU Businesses. For all others a error message will be displayed when attempting to create a account.

This requires your Store Code to be prepared to use this function, see Core Code Customizations for more on this.

Use this to show text in the Frontend describing that new accounts are only available for valid EU Businesses, if the Limit creation of new customer accounts to valid EU Businesses option is used. Requires the EuVat Tax Status Widget to be in your template.

This option allows to change the Default Tax Country for a Store from the country set in the configuration option Sales » Tax » Default Tax Destination Country to the stores General Country set in the configuration option General » Countries Option for specific Store setups in a Multi-Store and Multi-EU Country environment where the default tax rate used for Price Display shall have different VAT rates for the different Store Countries used. And EU-Business Customers shall be VAT excempt when not being in your country where you are VAT registered.

Leave this configuration option on Default Tax Destination, unless you have the following store setup:

• Multiple Stores for representing the same store with different Country Frontends.
• You VAT registration and administration is at a single country, different from the countries of the Country Frontends. But all EU Business customers shall be identified in relation to your VAT registration country (and not the Store Frontend country).
• For customers visiting a specific Country Frontend the VAT rate of that country used in the frontend shall apply (until the Billing or Shipping Address for the visiting customer is known).

You are VAT registered in the NETHERLANDS (NL) and your store has multiple Store Frontends for Netherlands (NL), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE):

1. For the Store Frontend in NL the VAT rate of Netherland shall be used per default.
2. For the Store Frontend in DK the VAT rate of Denmark shall be used per default.
3. For the Store Frontend in DE the VAT rate of Germany shall be used per default.
4. For the classification of EU Consumers or Store Home Country customers Netherland is the relevant Tax Country, but the local VAT rates shall be used for Price Display until the customers address is known.

To configure this setup with EuVAT the following is required:

1. Define the Tax Rates for Netherland, Denmark and Germany and include all of them in the Tax Rule for EU Consumers to have the correct EU Consumer VAT rate calculated. Only use the VAT rate of the Stores Home Country for the Store Home Country customers. See also here for more on the setup of Tax Rules when using Customer Groups or Customer Tax Classes and how to setup additional Country Tax Rules here.
2. Set EuVAT » Enable Country Tax Rules to Yes.
3. Set Tax » Default Tax Destination on all Stores to your VAT registration country, in this example Netherlands to have all Tax Calculation correctly relate to your VAT registration country for EU Business Customers.
4. Set General » Countries Options » Default Country for each country related Store to the designated Store Frontend country (NL, DK, DE) to have the default VAT rate of the Store Frontend country used per default where no customer address is known yet.
5. Set EuVAT » Default Tax Country for each Store to General Default Country to show the VAT rate of each Stores Frontend Country instead of the VAT rate for Netherlands as the default VAT rate.

You may need to adjust the following options Default Source Country or Source Country for EU Business to the individual stores country to adjust how customers are classified as EU Consumer or EU Business customer. As above setup only is adjusting the Tax Source country for selection of the Tax Rate used for the VAT Amount.

Allows to set a different Source Country used for EU VAT classification of the Customer: You may set your Tax Rules for one country and select a different Source Country here that is used to classify the Customer as EU Business, EU Consumer, Store Home Country or outside EU customer.
Leave it at - same as Default Tax Country - for your store if you are not using this specific setup.

Same as Default Source Country above and allows in addition to set a different Source Country for the classification as EU Business: If the customer has a valid EU VAT-ID and is from the selected country, then he is classified as EU Consumer customer.
Leave it at - same as Default Tax Country - for your store if you are not using this specific setup.

Allows to select the Address Source (default is Billing Address or alternative Shipping Address) on which the VAT Status shall be determined during the Onepage Checkout Process. The original VAT Status of the customer account is always determined by the Billing Address, setting this option to Shipping Address the VAT status of the current order is determined by the Shipping Address provided during checkout:

• Orders with Shipping Addresses inside the EU will be classified as VAT required.
• Orders with Shipping Addresses outside the EU will be classified as VAT excempt.

Per default EuVat is locking in the Tax Rules to the Default Store's Country. With this option set to Yes you may add Country Tax Rules for any specific country if required.

This option allows to match multiple tax rules with the same priority down to a single tax rule based on the address of the customer. With this option enabled you may define multiple tax rules for a country, its regions or zip-codes. Per default Magento is compounding tax rates with the same priority. This behaviour is changed with this option enabled such that only a single tax rule is selected and by that to allow override of a single tax rule over all others of the same priority.

See also Adding multiple Tax Rules for a single country for more on how to use this option.

Use this Option set to Yes, if you want EuVat to assign a Customer Group to your customers representing their Euvat Status:

Select the Customer group for customers identified by EuVat with the Billing Address in your Stores Default Tax Country. You may need to create the related Customer Group first, see above.

EuVat identifies a customer to this Group when the following criterias apply:

• Customers Billing Address is located in the Tax Default Country.
• Any VAT number entered as Tax/VAT Identification may be valid, invalid or none.

Select the Customer Group for customers identified by EuVat as EU Businesses. You may need to create the related Customer Group first, see above.

EuVat identifies a customer as EU Business when the following criterias apply:

• Country of Account Address is a EU member country
• Tax/VAT Identification is proofed as correct EU VAT number against the EU VAT number Database

Select the Customer Group for customers identified by EuVat as EU Consumers. You may need to create the related Customer Group first, see above.

EuVat identifies a customer as EU Consumer when the following criterias apply:

• Country of Account Address is a EU member country
• No Tax/Vat Identification is provided, or Tax/Vat Identification provided proofes incorrect against the EU VAT number Database, or the EU VAT number Database is currently inaccessible.

Select the Customer Group for customers identified by EuVat as non-EU Customers. You may need to create the related Customer Group first, see above.

EuVat identifies a customer as non-EU Customer when the following criterias apply:

• Country of Account Address is not member of the EU

Same as for the Option 'Assign Customers to Customer Groups' above, instead that each Customer will get the related Tax Class assigned to his account. Select the Tax Classes to be used for the different statuses.

Allows to override the default EuVat rules for customized tax calculation rules: See here for the description of the custom rules currently implemented.

Allows to override the default pricing calculation when using Catalog Prices that include VAT: See here for the description of the customized pricing currently implemented.

Allows to correct the tax amount when using extensions that deal with Discounts, when tax has been included in the orders grand total without deduction of the tax amount related to the discount. This is a helper function only, and will not correct any functional deficiencies of other extensions in handling Discounts and related tax miscalculations. It may help to correct missing tax amount reductions related to applied discount amounts.

Together with the above option Correct Tax for Total Discount select the Product Tax Class that shall be used for a tax amount correction. Use the Product Tax Class used for your products, or you also may create a Product Tax Class that then is used on a related tax rule.

The text entered here (HTML is allowd) to be used in any of the Transactional Emails, if the customer belongs to one of these EuVat tax groups. To use this feature you need to also add the related Email Text Block to your Transactional Email Messages.

The EU VAT-ID form field allows to have a link included to the European Commission on VAT-ID algorithm of its member states for explanation to customers to correctly enter their EU VAT-ID:

Example for Magento 2.1

On Magento 1.3-1.9 use of the EuVat Tax Status Widget is required to have this feature on the storefront.

Allows to update a customers tax status after his login to your shop. With this option enabled, EuVat will perform the tax check on every login of a customer. Please be aware that this may slow the login process due to the EuVat checks being performed on every login.

Setting this option to Yes will set the Customer Group or Tax Class for the customer account only during the registration in the Frontend. Any new customer account will per default added to the exclusion list for automatic status updates of EuVat. You may still use the Customer Account settings in the Administrator to modify this option for individual customers later.

Sets if a customer account shall be automatically updated with its VAT classification also on the Administrator Backend whenever a customer account is being saved.

The EU VAT Reports use Sales/Quote data that holds the customers tax classification at point of order. In case Sales/Quote data is missing, the related orders will not be in the EU VAT Reports results. To use the Customers Account instead, select Use Customer Account here.

Please be aware that with this change the resulting EU VAT Reports may become incorrect as the customers current account classification is used for the reports, which may have changed since the time of a order and when the report is generated. That may create false or missing entries in the reports.

Use this option only when needed.

Allows to set the Order Status for the EU VAT Reports such that only orders with the selected Order Status are collected for the report.

Defines the timeout in seconds for each query of a VAT number to the EU VAIS Service. Default is '30' seconds.

Defines the number of retries for queries to the EU VAIS Service. Requests are being retried if a communication error is occurring between your Webserver and the VIES System.

Defines the interval between single VIES query retries in seconds. Default is '1' second.

When defining a lifetime for validations with a value of days greater than '0', EuVat is storing the Queries and Results in the Shops database and updating the data if its age is over the defined lifetime. Using this feature allows to reduce the number of queries to the EU VIES service for a single customer while being active in your shop. Also the validation data will be available for the Customer Account page of your Administrator Backend.

To deactivate this feature for Debugging or Development purposes, use '0' for this setting. Then all queries will be real-time.

EU VIES enforces an API usage limit that only allows a single EU VAT ID to be validated once per day. This option allows to set this limit, we recommend to have a very low limit on this to prevent (1 or max. 2) usage violations and related IP-Address blocking on side of EU VIES.

EU VIES enforces an API usage limit of maximum 30.000 requests per day from a single IP-Address. This option allows to set this limit, with a maximum of 30.000 requests to prevent usage violations and related IP-Address blocking on side of EU VIES.

Allows to influence the behavior of the extension in case of EU VIES service disruptions:

Per default all VAT Numbers are rejected if their validation with the EU VIES is not possible due to service disruptions. EU Business Customers creating accounts may need to omit their VAT number, and consequently will get the Status of a EU Consumer if their Billing Address is within the EU. This is also shown in the Store Frontend by this message:

Allows to accept VAT Numbers by only checking their Syntax locally. This allows to temporarily accept VAT Numbers in case of service disruptions on the EU VIES Web Service. VAT Numbers are only checked if they are according to the VAT Number Syntax of the related country. No further checks with the EU VIES Web Service are being made.

If the VAT Number fails the Syntax Check, the behviour is as with Reject All VAT Numbers above.

A EU Business creating an Account with his VAT Number will be treated as EU Consumers if the VAT Number validation fails due to EU VIES service disruptions. New Customers may still create accounts, however EU Businesses with a valid VAT Number may get the Status of a EU Consumer if a validation of the VAT Number with the EU VIES service was not possible. This is also shown in the Store Frontend by this message:


VAT Numbers are first checked if they are according to the VAT Number Syntax of the related country, then validated against the EU VIES Web Service. If that Web Service is unavailable, the customer account will be set as EU Consumer regardless of the related VAT Number and its validity, the entered VAT Number is stored with the Customer Account.

If the VAT Number fails the Syntax Check, the behvior is as with Reject All VAT Numbers above.

Allows to suppress the notification on EU VIES service disruptions in the Store Frontend. The following messages will be suppressed if set to Yes:

Allows to enable or disable logging of EuVAT failure messages into the Administrator Notifications. Use this setting for logging messages on limited connectivity or response messages from the EU VIES service to the Administrator Notifications of your store. Setting this option to Yes is recommended for monitoring the extensions communication or to help identification of reasons prevent communication of the extension to the EU VIES service.

Please also see here for more on Service disruptions on the EU VIES service.

Select which severity level administrator notifications of the EuVAT extension shall receive. EuVAT is adding notifications into the Administrator Notifications on detected service disruptions. Set the related severity level for such notifications here. The default is Notice.

Select which Update Notifications you want to receive into your Administrator Notifications:


These Update Notifications are fed from our RSS Feeds, and are updated once per day only on login in the Administrator Backend of your Store.

In case you experience a slow-down of the Administrator Backend with EuVAT being installed, this may be caused by a slow communication between your stores server and our License Store when retrieving the related update notificiations, unmark all list entries here then to fully disable the update notifications.

Messages shown here identify possible issues the EuVAT extension has identified, including links to related documentation:

EuVat offers a Block displaying the Tax/VAT Status to your customers. You may want to add this Block into your Frontend Template:

Adding the EuVat Block to your Frontend Template...

We recommend to show Product Prices including and excluding Tax, to have a clear pricing structure towards your stores visitors. Because, once EuVAT was able to determine the tax status of the visitor, the shown product price may or may not include tax. Therefore showing Product Prices including and excluding Tax will make this visible to the visitor.

Also for the Shopping Cart, the Checkout Process and the Order we recommend to show the Product Prices excluding Tax, and to have a Tax Summary shown then for the whole order. That would be then the correct tax display in Business Environments.

Use System » Configuration » Tax to configure this:

Euvat activates the Customer Tax Class Attribute offered by Magento. With that all of your customer accounts have now the ability to manually change the Customer Tax Class:

Customers » Manage Customers

You may manually adapt the Customer Tax Class here. In case you are using Euvat to update your Customers Group assignment, set the Customer Tax Class to 'Select by Customer Group' to have the default Magento behaviour to determine the Tax Class based on the customers Group.

EuVat is adding some more features to your Shops Administrator, see here for more on these...

EU Business customers tend to enter their own VAT Number incorrectly, leaving out the Country Prefix and only providing the number part. EuVat is trying to correct such misentered VAT Numbers by prefixing the Country Prefix is one is missing and the Billing Address is a EU address.
This only applies to Taxvat Numbers entered on the Frontend, any Taxvat Number entered in the Administrator end is used without changes or validations.

To override the Customer Group or the Tax Class for a single Customer:

• Edit the customers account
• Set the Customer Group and/or Tax Class according to your preferences or requirements
• Set 'Exclude Customer from EuVat Updates' to Yes to tell EuVat to keep the current set Customer Group or Tax Class of this customer account.

In cases where you need to add a Tax Rule to calculate a VAT for any non-EU Country, use this as a guiding example:

Set the configuration option Allow Country Tax Rules to Yes for adding Tax Rules for a specific country to the tax rules now currently defined for the EU countries.

In this example here we are adding VAT of 10% for any Customer having its Address in Antartica, in addition to the default EU VAT tax handling:

Sales » Tax » Manage Tax Zones & Rates

We add the country with its Tax Rate to the Tax Zones:

Sales » Tax » Manage Tax Rules

Now we add the new Tax Rule for the country, and we need to make it lower priority than the other Tax Rules for the EU VAT tax handling. By that we tell Magento to execute this Tax Rule before other Tax rules and to use the VAT defined for it:


The Tax Rule itself is applying to our Customers outside of the EU, with the Tax Rate for our new country:



Now Customers for our new Country, that is outside of the EU, will get the VAT defined for their country added to their order.

In cases where you need to add a Tax Rule to calculate a VAT for another EU Member Country, use this as a guiding example:

Set the configuration option Allow Country Tax Rules to Yes for adding Tax Rules for a specific country to the tax rules now currently defined for the EU countries.

In this example here we are adding VAT of 19% for any Customer having its Address in Germany, in addition to the default EU VAT tax handling:


Sales » Tax » Manage Tax Zones & Rates

We add the country with its Tax Rate to the Tax Zones, in our case now “Germany” with a VAT rate of 19%:

Sales » Tax » Manage Tax Rules

Now we add the new Tax Rule for Germany, such that it applies to Business and Consumer Customers for the relevant Product Tax Classes:

You may put Tax Rules for such EU-Member Countries on the same Priority and after all other Tax Rules required by default for EuVAT:

As of 1.January 2015 the VAT regulation inside of the EU for EU Consumers will change for telecommunications, broadcasting and electronic services performed through the Internet: See here for the related EU legislation

If you need to prepare your Magento Store to apply the related EU Countries VAT rate to a EU Consumer transaction these are the steps to take:

Setup EuVAT as shown here using either Customer Groups or Customer Tax Classes.

In the following we will add additional EU Country Tax Rules for the local VAT rates of the EU Member Countries which need to be applied to EU Consumer (EU Enduser) purchases on Telecommunication, Broadcasting or Electronic Services.

Set the EuVAT configuration option Allow Country Tax Rules to Yes, to enable support for the additional EU Country VAT rates.

We prepared an Import File with the VAT rates of the EU countries here: On the Product Page of EuVAT Download EU VAT rates for Import to be found in the Additional Download section.
Import the CSV file contained inside of the download into the Tax Zones and Rates of your Magento Store using Sales » Tax » Import/Export Tax Rates:

The Tax Rates for the EU Countries should then be available in your Magento Store:

To add the EU Country VAT Rates to your Consumer (EU Enduser) Tax Rule, open the related Tax Rule in Sales » Tax » Manage Tax Rules and select all EU Country regular VAT Rates for that Tax Rule:

If you sell Products also with reduced VAT Rates:

1. Add a related Product Tax Class and apply it to the products having the reduced VAT Rate.
2. Add a related Tax Rule for the Consumer (EU Enduser) Customer Tax Class, select the Product Tax Class used for the reduced VAT Rate.
3. Select the reduced EU Country VAT Rates for the Tax Rule.
4. You may need to repeat this also for products where you need a different reduced VAT rate by adding more of such Tax Rules.

In case a specific region or zip-code of one country shall have a different Tax Rate, then add the Tax Rate and this region or zip-code as additional Tax Rule. Set the Priority of all Tax Rules from the same country to the same Priority.

Then enable the Option ”Single match for Tax Rules with same priority“ to perform a single match on the Tax Rules with same priority. This will match the address against all relevant tax rules and select the tax rate with the best address match. Per default (or with the Option ”Single match for Tax Rules with same priority“ disabled”) Magento is compounding such tax rates. With the Option “Single match for Tax Rules with same priority” enabled this default behaviour is changed to allow overriding multiple tax rates with same priority by the tax rule that has the best match to the customer or order address.

Shopping Carts of logged in customers are stored in Magento Database for a defineable period of time. The Tax calculated in these Cart Quotes stays unaffected by EuVat until a checkout process is started by the customer on the abandoned shopping cart.

EuVat (with release 0.3.0) supports 2 Modes, one where Customers are assigned to Customer Groups (Customer Group Mode) and one where the Customers Tax Class is assigned (Tax Class Mode).

When there is the need to switch your Magento site from one mode to the other, you need to update all your customers using the EuVat Dataflow Adapter. Setup the Adapter and run it to update all of your current customers. EuVat is not performing and cross-update between the modes during normal use.

Reduce the Tax Rules for your shop to the minimum required by EuVat. Remove any Tax Rules that are applicable for EU Countries, as EuVat is handling all EU Countries already by itself. Additional Tax Rules to handle specific non-EU Countries may get added as required.

This also applies to any Tax Rates, only specify the Tax Rates required by EuVAT in the first step. See also this documentation for exact examples and guidelines.

If there is the need to add additional Tax Rates and Rules for specific countries, add these later once you have EuVAT configured for your store. And set the configuration option Allow Country Tax Rules to Yes.

This extension is using the EU VIES database for validating EU VAT Numbers. That service, offered by the European Union, may experience technical difficulties, intermittend or longer outages. Such does influence the EuVAT functions and has nothing to do with the extension itself. In such case EuVAT is showing this message in the store frontend and Administrator backend:


Validations of EU VAT numbers in the Customer Account form fields may also fail with this message:


With a Service outage on the EU VIES Web Service, EuVAT will not accept new Customer Accounts with a EU VAT number per default. For the Customer to create his account he then has to delete his entered EU VAT Number (as it is currently impossible for the Extension to validate it) and shows the following message in the Store Frontend:


This behavior is to be influenced using the Configuration Option “In Case of EU VIES Service disruptions”.

EuVAT will record such detected disruptions in the Administrator Notifications with details on any received messages (with the related option “Log messages into administrator notifications” set to Yes):

System » Notifications


Related to such disruptions is also this FAQ Entry here.... You may also see FAQ Entry #16 of the EU VIES Service here...


The general status on EU VIES side can be checked here: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/technicalInformation.html

As our extension is using the EU VIES Web Service, validation VAT Numbers from the EU VIES Web Interface may still work whereas our extension will not be able to do so, as the outage is on the offered Web Service side.

As of March 2011 a legislative change in the italian fiscal regulations has the effect that a VAT number of a italian company may not validate using the extension.
Reason is that for EU intra-community purchases a italian company has to apply for a related VAT number in Italy, and that new VAT numbers issued in Italy for italian companies are not per default issued for use in intra-community purchases.

Consequently the EU VIES database has only VAT numbers of italian companies that are issued for EU intra-community purchases. As a result VAT numbers of italian companies may fail validation with our extension, whenever that VAT number is not issued for EU intra-community use.
Our extension will treat italian customers with such VAT number failing validation as a EU Enduser.

For stores with its default country of italy, use the configuration option Waive the frontend VAT Number validation for VAT numbers of the stores default country to reduce confusion of italian customers providing their correct VAT number which does not validate due to above reasons.

If you want to have VAT for Shipping always applied, regardless of the Customer VAT classification, then proceed as followed:

1. In all of the EuVAT Tax Rules for the different EU customer classification you need to deselect (unselect) the Product Tax Class that your store uses for shipping.
2. Add one tax rule that applies to all Customer Tax Classes and for only the Product Tax Class used for Shipping with the full VAT rate. That tax rule shall have the same priority number as the tax rule used for the Home Country tax rule (to have the resulting tax amounts to summed up).

That's it, now VAT should be applied in all cases.

As of 1.1.2021 the United Kingdom will leave the EU and with it the EU VAT Regime. As consequence UK Businesses and Customers has to be treated as Non-EU Customers for calculation of the VAT Rate.
To automatically apply this new rule with 1.1.2021 select the following Customized Behaviour in the EU VAT configuration options: