VAT & Taxes part deux [4.2.1650]

Hopefully I can explain this correctly in text, but I've attached several screenshots aswell to make things more clear. But as far as I can tell, VAT and Taxes are screwed up completely this time...

I've got a ProductC. Costs 50USD, it's taxable and has 10% Tax (include tax in prices).
The backend tells me this product costs $55, on the front end product overview it costs $50. (see screenshot 1)

When viewing my shopping cart it tells me $50.00 x 1 equals $55. and a subtotal of $55 (see screenshot 2)
My order summary tells me its subtotal $50.00, Tax $5.00. (see screenshot 3)

Now if I go back to the shoppingcart, all of a sudden the it's $5.00 cheaper. (see screenshot 4).
When I step through the entire process and end up at the confirmation page I end up with $50.00 and Tax $5.00 (see screenshot 5)

If instead of a foreign shipping adress I tell it to ship it to Alabama, US, all of a sudden VAT gets in play, even though
I distinctly said TAX and not VAT is applicable to this product (see screenshot 6)

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Somehow Tax and VAT are mixed up (showing VAT on US sale, showing Tax on NL sale) and the shoppingcart summary is displaying prices in a variety (first $55, later $50).

\

I've tested it with another product aswell...

ProductD costs 50USD, is VAT taxable and has 10% tax (included in prices).
This time on the backend it costs $55.00 and the front end shows nicely $55.00 (incl VAT) as it should.

In the shoppingcart it nicely says $55.00. 
Now when I try to ship it to the Netherlands, it suddenly costs $50.00 and no taxes or VAT seems to be applied.

And finally to top it off... paying triple taxes

If you'd adjust the 10% taxrate to country of delivery 'Netherlands' and I take my productC again.
We end up getting the following screenshot...

Product subtotal $50.00
VAT Tax: $5.00
Sales Tax: $10.00

(Fortunately it doesn't add the VAT Tax and the Sales Tax so in the end you just pay VAT and Sales but still)

Hi Jochem,

I have tested with a few products and different shipping and billing addresses and I get the problem you describe when I make improper configurations to taxes for a product and shipping. Have you disalbed caching for the pages that use Ecommerce widgets as described in the documentation?

Greetings,
Stanislav Velikov
the Telerik team

Hey Stanislav,

Thanks for replying and dabbling with my crummy descriptions :) It's not a caching issue, it's bonked...

As far as I can see 2 things go wrong:
- Taxes by shipping/billing
- Selling to the US.

Taxes by billing adress don't seem to work, see attached 2 screenshots of orders. I triple checked taxes are based on billing adress. Now as you can see in the order screenshots, I've only changed the shipping country and yet the prices vary. Shipping to the UK makes it add VAT, shipping to the US excludes the VAT.

This error happens no matter if you set prices include or excluding tax on the site.

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Secondly for some reason if you're selling to the US (let's imagine that shipping/billing is fixed) all of a sudden VAT doesn't apply no more. Which is strange because I've set my store in the Netherlands.

As a Dutch (non us) store, selling outside my country doesn't distinct between EU countries or US. It matters on how to file the final sales and taxes, but the sales process inside Sitefinity or every other Ecommerce software is similar. If however I want to achieve the same price/taxes for US and UK, I need to set sales taxes as well, which for a non US company totally doesn't make sense (and that's what's causing the misconfiguration as you put it).

Taxes can only be exempt if the billing customer adds a valid VAT identification number and can comply with several other requirements (specifically requirements that can't be met with non-shippable products). So ground rule is taxes apply, and I'm fairly confident this applies for all EU countries...

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Secondly shopping cart widget applies its prices based on the active shipping/billing (if that works) adress, which it shouldn't. Not only causes this the pricing difference between BE and FE as mentioned, it is confusing to the backend and end consumer aswell.

If the tax rate is set to display prices including taxes, it should do so everywhere until checkout, where (in case taxes don't apply) they are excempt. This is similar behavior to display prices excluding taxes until checkout where they are added.

@telerik I would like Jochem to get a bucketload of telerik points for all this testing, he clearly knows how all this stuff works (or should work) and has spent a ton of time finding issues! :)

@Steve

Just enjoying the great summer weather :)

I've tried to find some SQL facts to further explain the issues and allow you te recreate the error:

- Store is set in Netherlands (outside US) and currency is set to Euro's.
- ProductA costs €100, price including taxes and it has sales tax applied.
- ProductC costs €100, prince including taxes and it has VAT tax applied.

On the product display page it says ProductA costs €100 and productC costs €110 (incl VAT) which is correct.

- Open SQL studio and use the following query:
SELECT     ttal, tax, sub_total_display, pre_tax_total, pre_tax_price, pre_discount_tax, effective_tax_rate, discount_total, currency  FROM         sf_ec_cart_order

SELECT     title, price, tax_rate, is_vat_taxable, is_us_canada_taxable, tax_in_price, ttal, vat_tax_id
FROM         sf_ec_cart_detail

- Place productA in the shoppingcart and refresh the query.
the cart_order query is still empty.
the cart_detail query shows productA with [is_vat_taxable] as 0, [is_us_taxable as 1]

- Place productC in the shoppingcart and refresh the query.
the cart_order query is still empty.
the cart_detail query also shows productC with [is_vat_taxable] as 1, [is_us_taxable] as 0

- Browse to the shoppingcart page and it should look like screenshot1.
- Click on checkout
- Refresh the queries and the cart_order query will now have data.
- Set shipping and billing adress to Netherlands and click next.
- Refresh the queries...
the cart_order query suddenly has a tax of 20.00
the cart_detail query has changed, where now both productA and productC show [is_vat_taxable] as 1.

- Click on the shoppingcart page and it should look like screenshot2.


So all of a sudden, the productA which had no VAT assigned, gets assigned VAT. 
When clicking on the shoppingcart page, it naturally now shows productA magically being €110 (incl VAT).

Was almost buying the commerce module, but I also tested this issue with SQL manager. Same results here... gonna wait a while longer with purchasing. :(

Thanks Jochem!

Regards,
Daniel

Hi Jochem,

I will reply to each of your questions in parts so that it is easy to follow.

 I've got a ProductC. Costs 50USD, it's taxable and has 10% Tax (include tax in prices).
 The backend tells me this product costs $55, on the front end product overview it costs $50. (see screenshot 1)
  I have tested the functionality and the only reason it behaves this way is if you have unchecked "This price is VAT taxable" but still have a selection to VAT Tax Rate.(screenshot 1).
 Please note this is a bug in 4.2 release and we will be changing the UX of assigning taxes to products in 4.2SP1. If you would like to fix the issue now, please uncheck the "This price is VAT taxable"
 checkbox and select "--Select a Tax--" from the tax selector and save changes.(screenshot 2)
 
 When viewing my shopping cart it tells me $50.00 x 1 equals $55. and a subtotal of $55 (see screenshot 2)
 My order summary tells me its subtotal $50.00, Tax $5.00. (see screenshot 3)
 This is also the same issue as above. Please verify.
 
 Now if I go back to the shoppingcart, all of a sudden the it's $5.00 cheaper. (see screenshot 4).
 When I step through the entire process and end up at the confirmation page I end up with $50.00 and Tax $5.00 (see screenshot 5)
 The shoppingcart and checkout widgets will take your shipping address in to account while calculating VAT taxes. If you are shipping to a Non VAT Taxable country(even though your store is in a VAT Taxable
 country) the VAT Tax is taken off your order completely. This is a decision we took while implementing taxes and we welcome your input in this scenario.

All the best,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

Hey Venkata,

Thanks for taking the time to plow through the issues/questions...

I'm sorry to say you're wrong, perhaps there is a bug when you uncheck a tax, but it's still secretly checked but these aren't the issues, at least not for me or with these issues. Also the screenshots seem to be the same, so I couldn't see the 2nd one.

Let me try and adress the bugs and leave the IRS/NON-VAT discussion for a different post ok?

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The pricing difference between BE and FE actually is localization.
The backend pricing doesn't take the store's location into account, if I give a product a tax (sales or vat or both) it just applies them on the backend.

To verify/reproduce:
take a clean SF with english language, set the store to located in Netherlands or Bulgaria. Create a tax that is US tax. Apply it to a product and compare the price on the back end and on the front end.

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You said "The shoppingcart and checkout widgets will take your shipping address in to account while calculating VAT taxes. " and that's what I said also, that's a bug.

If I define under taxes that they should be applied by billing address instead of shipping address then they should. Either it's a bug because the feature shouldn't be in the tax properties or it's a bug on checkout because you're ignoring it in the calculation.

To verify/reproduce:
Create Tax-S, set tax applied to shipping adress. 
Create Tax-B, set tax applied to billing adress.
Create product-S and product-B, make them identical (price incl taxes/$50) but apply the different tax rates.
And go check them out with varying billing adresses.

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The difference between the initial price from the shopping cart summary and the shopping cart summary after having stepped thru step 2 in the checkout process is twofold.

First, the above mentioned bug causes this behavior.
Secondly if you follow my latest post (the one with the sql statements) you see that taxes get applied spontaneously to products to whom it shouldn't apply. 

And since during the checkout phase you're storing back data into the [sf_ec_cart_detail] table, it gets overwritten and you end up with a distorted shoppingcarts.

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Please follow that last example and you'll see it's not a misconfiguration on my part, but a clear step-by-step approach so you can verify the errors with sql-facts.  I know my initial posts on these issues were a bit unclear but after having spent more and more time with the ecommerce it's clear that these are 3 very distinct and verifiable bugs. 

Jochem.

Hi Jochem,

You are correct, the backend pricing does not take store location into account while showing the price. However I have forwarded your request to user interface team and they are looking into it.
Regarding Tax rates and VAT Taxes bug(The bug you pointed out with SQL Statements), unfortunately I was not able to reproduce the issue. Can you send me screenshots of your product configuration /
tax configuration and other screenshots that go with your issue? so I can look into this issue with more definitive test case.

Greetings,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

Ok... knock yourself out!

Hi Jochem,

I have logged this as a bug. Here is the PITS link for the bug.

Best wishes,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

Hi Venkata,

Not to be a pain in the ass, but the pits bug is just the minor issue with price calculation mixing up shipping & billing. I think applying taxes to products which shouldn't have taxes applied would be more important.

I've tried to show it with sql statements and through an abundance of screenshots if something is still unclear or not reproducible just let me know how else I can clarify it.

Jochem.

Hello Jochem,

I have also forwarded your other observations(the ones with SQL facts) to the team for review too.

Greetings,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

Hi all,

is this eCommerce Module a product or a prototype???

As long as you cannot handle, calculate and process VAT for european countries - this feature could only be protoype for European customers!

You long will it take to solve this problem?????

Regards, Robert

Hey Robert,

I understand your frustration but the ecom-team has done an amazing job in my opinion. Yes there are some bugs/glitches and issues... but it's a still a first version and look how amazing it already is.

The stuff they've done is covered in Telerik's awesome sauce and if you look at the newly released Roadmap, they've even sped up their release cycle to be able to have a 100% full-featured/full-tested eCommerce Module by the end of the year with pluggable payment modules and extensible checkout.

Just look at how far they've come from preview version to this first public release and you'll see they're quickly adapting and responding to comments/suggestions from us.

To their defense, I think I've almost been the only one who's been testing/complaining and suggesting (European) taxes and sales and that's not boosting priority at all but still they're in rapid response mode. So yes it's frustrating that the first release isn't bug free, but none of us can expect something as complex as this to be 100%...

Most of the quirks/bugs I've posted have already been logged and resolved so just wait 2 weeks till the SP comes out :)

Just my two cents...
Jochem.

Hi Jochem,

I am following your eCommerce analysis and I thank you for your great job. But please understand: Sitefinity wants to get 2.000 $ for a pre-release. - I have potential european customers in the back but I cannot use this protoype unless this VAT problem is solved.

Regards, Robert

Hey Robert,

No we're on the same page there..., I just wanted to give a +1 to the ecommerce team instead of just complaining & suggesting. It is not production ready at all for larger implementations or european sites:

Departments are atm a non-feature, but that should change in v4.3 with proper hierarchy and programmatic abilities.

Products are functional and already offer some flexibility but have some glitches in them.

Shipping works aside from a glitch here and there.

Taxation/pricing works if you're doing single country/simple items, complex scenario's (intl sales/digital products/discounts/sales) are handled incorrect. 

The checkout process is simple/limited but works as long as you move forward and stick to shippable products.

And personally I was hoping more of a product management system instead of a product adding & editing system but still, the ground work has been layed, concrete has been poured and the blueprints look promising.

Jochem.

Hello Robert, Jochem,

I will start by saying that we are actively listening to all your opinions and issues you are facing and we really thank you for all the input. Please be sure that we are using all the feedback in  making Sitefinity eCommerce a better product. The upcoming 4.3 release of Sitefinity will address a majority of your concerns. You can read more about our roadmap here .

Kind regards,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

@Jochem and Robert

I also took a look at the eCommerce module last weekend and made some similar observations. I did not test not as extensively as you did, but nonetheless I also found things that are strange and give an impression of a premature module that is sold at full price.

- No Email are sent, neither to the customer nor the seller to inform that a sale was made. Even though you have to setup the smtp servers etc.
- Absolutely no verification of customer address is made and I did not find a way to customize this via widgets. If this can be done only with code, then I think that is a no go, as our customers cannot always pay for every customization if they want to have changed something.
- And then the all the VAT/Tax problems. For me it is actually already confusing why there is a taxable checkbox and VAT checkbox. I did not find any info in the docs what the actual differences are.

I personaly also do have a problem with Teleriks attitude to release functionality that actually is not able to fulfill any use cases that is only a jota off the most basic use case and then telling the next SP or release will fix it. If the error bugs would be in areas which are rare use cases then it would look differently.
I assume that Telerik wants to close the gap to other vendors or open source CMS with short release cycles. If these releases would be without any bugs, then everything would be great, but the way it is they endanger the goodwill of existing customers and partners.

Regards
Jörg 

Hi Jörg ,

Let me address your concerns one by one
- No Email are sent, neither to the customer nor the seller to inform that a sale was made. Even though you have to setup the smtp servers etc.
At the moment emails are sent to the customer when an order is placed, if you are not able to get emails to go out, please look at Sitefinity error log which will give you more accurate information on why the email did not go through.
- Absolutely no verification of customer address is made and I did not find a way to customize this via widgets.
It is a nice suggestion and I have forwarded your request to the team.

As I said earlier we are hearing the feedback from our community regarding VAT and taxes and we are making changes to Ecommerce to make it a better product. Please be sure to follow our roadmap.

All the best,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team

Hi all,

I've browsed over the issues mentioned by everyone and with the new v4.3.1873 out, I think it's fair to say this thread should be closed. The issues mentioned have changed significantly and 6 months down the line nobody should be giving this thread a second look.

I'm going to test everything out over the weekend and if necessary open a new v4.3.1873 thread naturally :)

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The ecommerce team did an overhaul on taxes and introduced TaxSettings, with a side wide display tax. Next to that they've introduced tax classes as the jumping point for tax calculations, basically invalidating all my vat/tax issues mentioned here because the calculations have changed...

@Jörg
I'm assuming the sent email issue is fixed?

@Venkata
You've added the address verification as a feature request to PITS?

Hello Jochem,

Do let us know if you run into any issues with taxes on 4.3. As you know we will hear from the community and make changes if they are necessary.

Also, yes, Address verification has been added to PITS as a feature request. Here is the PITS link

Greetings,
Venkata Koppaka
the Telerik team