premium membership taxes?

[TheReverendTholomewPlague]

I had this happen to me. I didn't mind because it was only 20p extra but it would have been nice to have a warning on the subscriptions page saying something like "depending on you location, you may be charged VAT as well as normal fees". Would this be possible for Nexus 3.0?

[Thandal]

How about just "... plus any applicable taxes."?

[TheReverendTholomewPlague]

Yeah, that works too. Although given that some people have trouble reading Readmes, they might not know what applicable taxes are :P

 

Seriously though, that would probably work just as well

[Paxan_1]

Hi,

 

i have asked my friend because of this, he has paid for my month :), well he has 3,56€ on his visa card, thats the 2,99£..., with 20% on top of it, it should be ~3,6£ (~4,10€). Wonder why he hasnt paid the tax... :unsure:

 

Sarah

[buddah]

Thread cleanup. There is no avoiding the tax.

 

Let us speak no more of breaking the law, it is tacky and paints the site and community in a bad light.

 

Buddah

[PlaceboPRS]

Sorry to bump an old thread but I cannot find a more recent pertinent thread.

 

I'm in Sweden and also being a business am VAT registered so I shouldn't be charged VAT for purchases from the UK (such as membership here for example), the main reason I'm replying is IMO the premium services provided by Nexus mods are now affected by the changes in UK VAT laws updated as March 2015, that states that the amount of VAT being charged should be the amount applicable to the country of residence, so charging everyone at a UK VAT rate is no longer correct. More information is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers/vat-businesses-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers

 

Also here: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm#national_rules

 

http://i.imgur.com/u5W0J7nl.jpg

 

 

I was about to purchase a lifetime membership for myself but TBH I was very disappointed the way you hide away the "sales tax"/VAT issue.

 

I'm happy to provide my VAT Registration Number (VRN) to whoever processes payments so I can pay the appropriate price for the lifetime membership as soon as possible?

[Dark0ne]

I believe you're talking about VAT MOSS, which was brought in at the turn of the year and which has been a horrific pain in the back side for many small businesses across the EU. The premise being that now people pay the VAT rate of the country that they are currently located in when purchasing online, rather than the VAT rate of the country the business you're purchasing from resides in. It was designed to stifle corporate behemoths like Amazon from basing their business in Luxembourg at their original VAT rate of 7%. Since bringing it in, naturally, Luxembourg have raised their VAT rates considerably. Surprise surprise.

 

Irrespective, we do now, by law, have to charge VAT at the rate of the country you reside in. Which for Sweden is 25%.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say we "hide away the sales tax". Every single package on the store page has this written on it, very clearly, not hidden away and not in some sort of small font:

 

Tax

Please be aware we are obligated by law to charge VAT to EU citizens based on your local tax rate. If you are an EU resident the total price at the end of the checkout process will be shown inclusive of tax. We cannot show you how much the package will be inclusive of tax (for obvious reasons) until you let us know what country you're from during step 2 of the purchasing process. We apologise that this isn't particularly clear.

 

 

How is that hidden and not self-explanatory? We can't show you the tax you will owe until we know where you live! Especially considering only 30% of Premium Memberships come from the EU anyway.

 

The Nexus is only a small business and has no means to do B2B (Business-to-Business) sales. I don't know how the Swedish VAT system works, but in the UK we pay the VAT at the source and then claim back any VAT paid when we do our VAT return (normally quarterly). Ergo, I'm sorry, but we have no way of selling to you without the tax.

[PlaceboPRS]

Much thanks for the reply Robin.

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say we "hide away the sales tax". Every single package on the store page has this written on it, very clearly, not hidden away and not in some sort of small font:

 

 

I'm busy downloading a bunch of Fallout4 mods, I think to myself, hmm I should buy premium I've had it before and they're good guys, I scroll up, click my account name, click go premium, it takes me here: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/users/premium/?

 

It says there:

 

http://i.imgur.com/afjo3UQ.jpg

 

Very clearly, "Life-time membership £49.99", no mention of VAT/Sales tax in that box, no mention of VAT/Sales tax on the whole page (I CTRL+F'd VAT and tax). That would have been opportunity 1 to make it clear that VAT/tax will be charged even if you cannot (as you say) confirm how much it will be (well surely you could because you have my visiting IP right?)

 

I click "Go Premium" and I'm taken here:

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/store/category/1-premium-membership/

 

http://i.imgur.com/VZhVEhr.jpg

 

How very confusing, suddenly the lifetime price is no longer showing £49.99 but instead £62.49, why is that? Again, no mention of VAT on that page, no mention of sales tax on that page, why is that? This is opportunity 2 to be up front and open about the VAT/Sales Tax, at this point you clearly know how much the VAT/tax is right because you've applied it, so if you've applied it why doesn't it say "includes 20% UK VAT" or whatever.

 

This is the point where I'm extremely confused, I go back to step 1, I click go premium again, I click go premium the second time after seeing £49.99 and again it shows £62.49 and again no explanation why and I'm confused, I try a different browser, nope same result, I google "nexus premium price increase" to see if you recently put the prices up but forgot to update the website, nope can't find anything. I think hmm the £ has been acting really strange of late, maybe the price is based on $ and the £ just plummeted so I check currency values and again that doesn't tally!

 

And yes, finally I click the price and I do then see the price now includes VAT after all, how very confusing, and considering the fact that every other retail UK store I've visited clearly makes it known that you're looking at prices that include or exclude VAT (often with a button where you choose inclusive/exclusive of VAT) I do think it's being hidden somewhat unfairly.

 

I'm at the point where I would love to pay for lifetime premium as I know you guys provide an awesome service, but I'm not prepared to pay 20% UK VAT or even 25% Swedish VAT on top of the fee when I am VAT exempt outside Sweden, so I guess one option is I have a friend in the USA buy the lifetime premium and donate it to me, does that work? I looked at the gift voucher amounts but none of them tally to £49.99, is the best option £59.99 with £10 left over to donate elsewhere (100s of mods worthy of donation so easy to find a worthy cause).

Edited November 13, 2015 by PlaceboPRS

[Dark0ne]

The site knows the VAT to charge you because you had already bought a membership in the past (which you didn't seem to mind paying tax on then! It would have been 20% at that time). If you were someone who hadn't purchased something before then the prices would not have updated until you had entered your details. We can't go by IP addresses alone because of the prevalence of VPNs these days. Indeed, VAT MOSS/EU regulations dictate we have to go off an IP address AND what the user enters and if the two don't correlate it's flagged as a fraudulent payment....that's the EU for you.

 

We can definitely add a blurb about prices being exclusive of VAT on that first page, I'll put it on the to-do list. We're extremely limited with what we can do in the store front as we're using off-the-shelf software (IP.Nexus), built to integrate in to the forums by the forum developers themselves (Invision, who are American, and ergo, clueless about EU VAT regulations). We have limited programming time and what programming time we do have we'd rather spend on keeping the sites up/improving the modding side of things rather than improving the financial side of things. Our focus on what we do, rather than how we make money, has been a staple of what has made the Nexus the Nexus for 14 years now.

 

If you go the "friend buying you Premium" route, then the best route (if they're also a member) is to use the "Donate Premium" option on your profiles. You can fiddle with your donation settings in your preferences, but basically, if s/he buys you Premium then you'll get the Premium and they'll get 12 months of Premium for free as well.