Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
The EU VAT Assistant does not include an option to hide checkout fields, because, even if a customer is not in the EU, the data to prove this must be collected (i.e. you still need an address). That is, it’s not as easy as saying “not EU, I don’t need to know more“. The burden of proof remains.
As the for IP address, that’s correct. The EU VAT Assistant collects and stores it, and it counts as a piece of evidence (for now).
Thank you Diego for your answer. I suspected as much.
Hmmm, so no one who sells digital stuff online to anyone who wants it can any longer make fast paypal buy button? Do you really suppose EU will crack down on millions of sites selling globally who might have some EU customers? How can they? I assume very few even know of this.
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
Unfortunately, yes. You need to show if you apply VAT or not, and why you did or did not. The rules apply to all sellers, globally, and they will soon be implemented by other countries too, such as Australia, South Africa, Japan, South Korea and, rumours say, also the United States. This means that a merchant would become liable towards most world countries for collection of VAT, following those countries’ rules.
As for the chance of “being busted”, we can’t say to what extent the rules will be enforced on merchants. We know several customers and marketplaces in the US who clearly told us that they are not going to respect those rules, because they don’t care, or they think they don’t make sense. Technically, they are in violation of the rules. Practically, it’s becoming a “come and get me” system.
The option to hide checkout fields should be there anyway. For example i use woocommerce both for my professional activity AND, with a separate (virtual) product list, for donations outside my businness.
For donations i should NOT apply vat nor ask for anything related to it, and i cannot disable this annoying request
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
Hding checkout fields is outside the scope of the EU VAT Assistant. The plugin was designed with the specific objective of compliance with VAT MOSS rules, and its job is to collect VAT evidence.
If you need to show/hide fields based on your custom criteria, there are other plugins for that purpose.
Diego: no, even using other plugins like woocheckout it cannot done cause eu-vat-assistant doesn’t add the field to the cart field array nor it offer an hook to filter it’s output, so, it doesn’t see it at all and it cannot hide it.
so, i understand when you say “Hding checkout fields is outside the scope of the EU VAT Assistant”, but or you give this opportunity or at least move the eu-vat-assistant fields in the cart array to let other plugins do that.
Actually the only way i have found is to hide it in functions.php of my theme by doing:
add_filter('wc_aelia_eu_vat_assistant_location_evidence_countries', 'disable_eu_vat_countries');
function disable_eu_vat_countries($countries)
{
global $wordpress, $woocommerce;
$products = $woocommerce->cart->get_cart();
foreach( $products as $product ) {
if($product['product_id']==1264) {
add_action( 'wp_footer', 'inline_hide_eu_vat' );
return array('US','US');
}
}
return $countries;
}
function inline_hide_eu_vat() {
?>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(".aelia_eu_vat_assistant").hide();
</script>
<?php
}
Of course this isn’t an ideal way to do that, but eu-vat-assistant doesn’t offer a filer hook to remove it at all.
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
The EU VAT Assistant doesn’t provide a filter to hide the field because it’s not supposed to. As I wrote it was designed for a specific purpose, which is compliance with the EU VAT MOSS regulations, and the VAT field is an integral part of the process required for compliance.
Usage outside its original scope may require some tweaking, as you have seen. However, you should not have to go through all that work. You should be able to hide the field simply by removing the action that renders it. There is another thread about this: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/move-vat-field-remove_action.
Of course, you will also have to make sure that you don’t set the VAT field as “required”, or you will hide a field and then get an error message because it’s filled.
Diego: It is suggested to anyone writing plugin to add a filter anytime you add content, and it’s a great suggestion.
I understand the scope of eu-vat-assistant, i understand what you are saying, but you are assuming one have a shop used only for a company and you don’t take that there are use case where you can have in the same shop a donation for free projects AND a company product, in this case having a way to activate and/or deactivate it only for specific products make totally sense, think about that for a future release please.
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
We have over a dozen plugins on the market, we know the importance of adding flexibility. Since the plugin was designed for a specific purpose, donations were not taken into account (in some countries, they are still subject to VAT, anyway), therefore the option of showing the field depending on cart content was not in the list.
I will take note of the feature request, but I can’t promise a delivery date.
Note
Please keep in mind that the EU VAT Assistant is a full premium plugin (there is no “freemium”, like with other products), but that doesn’t mean that it’s free for us to develop and maintain (quite the opposite). We are a business and, as you can understand, we must prioritise what is most viable.
Of course, you are always welcome to sponsor its development, if you wish, or contribute to its maintenance by purchasing a support plan. 🙂
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
The feature request has been queued. I asked to add a filter to allow making the VAT field hidden. We will review it tomorrow, I will see if I can push it for release in the next update.
Diego: i’m actually also an aelia paying customer (for other plugins) and also a business, so, i really get what you mean.
Anyway, thanks to add this feature in the queue for future release.
Plugin Author
Diego
(@daigo75)
You’re welcome. I will see if we can “sneak in” a filter somewhere, so that you can make the VAT field hidden dynamically. You will just have to keep in mind that a field that’s not rendered cannot be displayed via JavaScript (i.e. if you remove it entirely from the checkout page, you can’t show it without reloading the page).
