Taxes and Woocommerce

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Calculating the correct tax to be paid on Woocommerce

It should not have been this hard. Though perhaps I am my own worst enemy, but here is the story.

The Problem

I had set up Woocommerce to include tax in the price for my products. I do this as the majority of sales are here in Thailand and I have to pay 7% GST to the government.

The Issue

So every time I opened up Chrome and went to my website the prices are listed as whole numbers and the tax is in the selling price. All good, right.

Well it turns out that it was not. Note: Prices are in Thai Baht - 1 USD = ~32 THB

When opened in another browser the prices would not display the tax included.

I was confused the prices were included in my Chrome browser. Why was it different in any other browser? So I logged into WA and went to WC settings and checked the setting for tax were all set to inclusive as well. Also, when I then refreshed the website -the prices all changed to the correct amounts.

But, if I shut down the browser and then reopened the website - we were back to no tax included in the price. Also, if I shut down Chrome and just opened the website, without going through the back office - no tax.

The website was supposed to look like this.

Frustration mounting at this point

Why would the taxes be left out of the calculation? I could not understand it and I was worried as we were doing a big social media push this week and I wanted the website to work.

I chenged the settings to exclude tax - and that worked for the prioces, but not my tax invoices that I need for the government.

The Solution

I Googled and read numerous pages and posts about this and eventually found the solution.

What is this you may ask?

Well it turns out the setting that you need is the location of the store.

That was the secret - base the tax on the address of the shop not the customer shipping address.

I assumed that because my customers were here in Thailand I would calculate tax based on their address.

It took me most of a day to figure this out and then most of another day to get my shipping sorted out properly.....but that is another story.

Hopefully this will solve a problem for someone who is looking for an answer to woocommerce tax

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Recent Comments

16

Around a year ago when I first set up woocommerce I made a loss on my first sale lol because of that because to me in the UK the 20% tax we have to pay was included in my listing price and for anyone that was to buy from the UK would have seen the correct price.

However for someone living in the USA for example when they visit my shop the price they see will not have included the 20% tax and there was no way for me to have known this. I only realised when someone from the USA bought from me that the 20% tax was not included for them and like you I had a promotion of a 10% discount running already. My profit margin was 20% before the discount, so the sale resulted in a 10% loss.

I then changed the tax to be paid depending on the location of my business and now everyone, regardless which country they buy from, see the 20% tax included in the price.

We apparently need to learn these things as we go along. It seems crazy, but when I Googled why the tax was not showing up in the product. I could only find general information about setting up woocommerce and tax. Nothing specific about which way to set up for tax liabilities.

The information is out there but buried.

Thanks for your comment.

I am glad to hear that I am not the only one that came across the issue. May be worth creating a video on this to provide some good information for others out there. :) Wishing you all the very best!

thank you for the information

You are welcome, I hope it saves you some time

ok sir.

I'm glad you got it sorted out, Alexander!

Thanks. Still working on the shipping. I thought I had it figured out, but. I was wrong.

Well, persistence will see you through, my friend!

Sounds like you have it figured out correctly. Just going by when I collected tax on eBay, now thankfully there is no need since they now take care of it on their end. Thanks for the great post.

Stay safe,
Mickey

You are welcome. I think I have it all sorted, now if I could only finish sorting out the shipping categories and discounts over a certain amount.

Working on it.....

Alex

You are really engaged in business. Taxing and other matters. Meaning you pay tax when there are sales and that's good to know.

Definitely trying to be engaged as much as possible. Still learning, but learning with sales is the best way to go.

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