Sales tax and VAT collection is a new feature in Subsail, launching on July 1st, 2021.

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Overview

  • Tax in Subsail allows you to create tax rates for print subscriptions for specific countries
  • Tax is calculated for both new orders and renewals
  • Tax is added on top of product prices
  • Tax is recorded on each order and saved in both Subsail and Stripe

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Setting up tax rates

There is a page in the Sell section of Subsail, called “Tax”. On this page you can set different flat tax rates for different countries. Simply choose a country from the list and specify the tax rate percentage you need to charge customers from that country.

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Charging tax

Once you’ve set up tax rates for different countries, customers in those countries will immediately start being charged tax, based on the shipping country they choose at checkout. Tax is applied to all “print” or “print + digital” products. Tax is automatically calculated and added to each order, both new orders through your checkout and all future renewals (even for customers who weren’t charged tax on their original order). Tax is calculated based on the price of the product, after any discounts and excluding any postage costs. Here’s an example: Product: €40
Postage: €5
Discount: 10%
Tax rate: 15% Taxable amount: €40 - 10% discount = €36
Tax: 15% of €36 = €5.40
Total: €36 product + €5.40 tax + €5 postage = €46.40 To stop charging tax to a specific country, simply delete the record on your “Taxes” page in Subsail.

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Adding tax to receipt emails

There are four new email tags available for “Subscription receipt” emails.
  • {{ order.product_price }}
  • {{ order.postage_amount }}
  • {{ order.tax_amount }}
  • {{ order.tax_rate }} (this is the tax percentage)
This is an example of adding these variables to extend the default receipt email: 
Order {{ order.id }}<br>1 x {{ account.name }} subscription ({{ order.subscription_length }} issues, starting with issue {{ order.start_issue_number }})

Product: {{ order.product_price }} {{ order.currency }}
Postage: {{ order.postage_amount }} {{ order.currency }}
Tax: {{ order.tax_amount }} {{ order.currency }} ({{ order.tax_rate }}%)
Total: {{ order.amount }} {{ order.currency }}

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Viewing and exporting charged taxes

You can view each subscription’s tax information by checking the order details on individual subscription pages in Subsail. Tax rates and amounts are also stored within the Metadata section of each Payment page in your Stripe account. Coming soon: tax information will be included in Subsail’s CSV exports, so you can pass on your tax data to third parties.