Plugin Support
Hannah S.L.
(@fernashes)
Automattic Happiness Engineer
Hey there!
Taxes are handled very differently around the world, which is why those different scenarios aren’t baked into WooCommerce. Instead, different plugins are used – for example, our EU VAT Number plugin is used for handling European VAT where the VAT number must be recorded and verified against an external API before removing taxes from the order:
https://www.woocommerce.com/products/eu-vat-number/?aff=10486&cid=1131038
You can set this up for yourself using a bit of code:
https://businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-remove-tax-checkout-field-value-exists/
Alternatively, you can go with a plugin if you’d like a more complete package and access to support:
https://ignitewoo.com/woocommerce-extensions-plugins-themes/woocommerce-tax-exempt/
If you believe this is something that should be included in WooCommerce core, I recommend voting and commenting on our ideas board:
http://ideas.woocommerce.com/forums/133476-woocommerce/suggestions/32155336-tax-exemption
Thanks for the reply Hannah – I’m particularly grateful for an EU VAT solution … it will be so useful for my business here in Wisconsin that sells only to US customers.
I have commented and voted. Tax exempt is universal, it’s a need everywhere and coding / plugins are not the best way to handle something that EVERYONE will need and use at one time or another.
The code you pointed to bases VAT exemption on Zip Code, not on user role.
So basically, I guess the answer is “go out and buy something”. OK fine.
Plugin Support
Hannah S.L.
(@fernashes)
Automattic Happiness Engineer
I’m sorry you’re frustrated. I used the VAT plugin as an example, as I know European VAT laws far better than the US laws – the same thing is true, though, that you usually need a customization or a plugin for these scenarios.
I do recommend buying a plugin that will help you with this, as US tax laws are complex.
Thanks again Hannah – this should be a core functionality. Where ever there are “taxes” there are those who are exempt. That’s universal, so if you’re going to build the functionality in to CHARGE tax, then there should be a way to bypass the tax as well. That’s not so complex.
@agilityjeff I’m a fellow Wisconsinite in the same predicament. Did you find a solution? Would love to hear what you ended up doing to solve your problem.
@lnvndrhydn, the solution came in two steps. First, the real fix in WooCommerce was in Booster for WooCommerce: https://booster.io. I don’t recall if that specific feature was in the free version here at the WP Repository or if it was one of the many features that led me to purchase the Booster Plus for WooCommerce (paid version).
I can not recommend that Booster plugin highly enough – everything worked exactly as it should and no single feature took more than 5 – 10 minutes to have working perfectly.
Sadly the “Booster” outperformed WooCommerce as a whole. After getting completely frustrated and losing countless sales because we could never get Shipping right, not even after purchasing multiple Shipping plugins from Automattic, we gave up and moved over to ECwid which has been a breeze to configure, is rock-solid reliable, and offers LIVE HELP if something doesn’t work. Imagine that!
After years of getting by with all the limitations of FREE WooCommerce, I finally realized that my time and the frustration was simply not worth it … so now we pay a small monthly fee and all the hassle and shortcomings are gone. Yep, we’re gettin’ what we pay for!
@agilityjeff thanks for the info. Until I had a client like this I didn’t realize how important it was to distinguish between for-profit and not-for-profit. I have to believe this is a more universal need than not. I now have several clients dealing with this need.
Best to you!
Please bear in mind, this doesn’t have as much to do with selling to non-profits as it does selling to wholesale customers. So we set all our wholesale clients up with a WP account that has a designated role called “Wholesale Client”. If the user who is logged in has that role, they don’t get charged tax AND they get a discount on their products. With the Booster plugin we were able to do both, and even vary the amount of the discount by product type.
I think you would be paying about $200 for WooCommerce plugins to do that – IF they are out there and available, and work.
AgilityJeff – How did you set it up so that “Wholesale Clients” didn’t get charged tax? I’ve got Booster Plus but I can’t seem to find a way to do that for my “Wholesale” role.
Sorry but that’s a long time ago and I can’t recall off the top of my head. I had so many issues with WooCommerce that I finally gave up and walked away.
$0 Tax is really easy on my new platform of choice – Ecwid.
