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Can I set up advanced tax rules?
Can I set up advanced tax rules?

How to charge different rates of VAT for different countries

Vicky Carmichael avatar
Written by Vicky Carmichael
Updated over a week ago

✨ This requires our beta Advanced Tax feature. Contact us to request access.

How tax works in Tito

If you're completely unfamiliar with how to apply tax to tickets in Tito, we recommend you start by reading this guide. It will walk you through how to set up tax types and attach them to tickets, for any one-size-fits-all situations. Read on for instructions for setting up advanced tax rules.

For in-person events

Firstly, if your event is taking place in a physical location, you shouldn't need to use this feature at all.

VAT for in-person events differs to VAT for goods and services, where a reversal is possible. Instead, VAT for in-person events should be charged based on the event location, and irrespective of the attendee's location or status. This means all your attendees should be charged VAT at the same rate.

For more information, please see our guide on VAT.

For online events

If you're running an online event, the tax rules differ. We're not qualified to provide any guidance on the specifics, so we recommend you consult a tax specialist as a first step. But once you know what you need to charge and to whom, you can use our beta Advanced Tax feature to set up some custom rules to handle different scenarios.

As this is both a beta and an advanced feature, it does take a little bit of configuring. Here are the steps you need to follow (see the example in the section below if things don't quite make sense):

  1. Head to your Account Settings (accessible from the main Dashboard)

  2. Click on Tax in the left-hand sidebar. If you can't see it, that either means:
    a) you haven't contacted us to enable this feature on your account yet (email us)
    b) you don't have sufficient access rights (ask the Admin on your account to grant you access)

  3. Click on Create a new tax type and set up your tax rates (e.g. UK VAT @20%). You will then be able to use these tax types within your individual events.

  4. Click on Rules (under Tax in the left-hand sidebar) and then on Create a new set of tax rules. Name the set and save.

  5. From there you can add individual rules, which will be cycled through in order. You'll need to select ones of tax types you've set up and apply it only in certain situations (e.g. attendees in specific countries, all EU countries etc.) Once you've created your ruleset, this will be available to use in your events.

  6. Open up your event, and click on a ticket. Set the tax exclusive price first, then scroll to the Tax options section. Set this to Advanced and click Add a tax component. Choose the relevant ruleset and in the Amount field next to it, simply re-enter the pre-tax price. The Price is tax exclusive box should be checked by default.

  7. Finally, head to Settings > Payment/Register form and ensure country is set to required.

You are now ready to test (on a secret ticket is best). You can use the following example if you like.

Example

Let's say you're based in the Netherlands and you're running an online event. You consult a tax specialist and they advise you to charge VAT to all countries within the EU apart from the Netherlands, and not to charge VAT to anyone in a country outside of the EU. (This is a hypothetical scenario, by the way!)

First you'd create any tax rate(s) you'll need, under Account Settings as explained above.

Next you'd create a ruleset called something like "Charge VAT to EU countries except Netherlands".

Then you'd create the following rules in order:

  1. If the country is NL, charge no tax

  2. If the country is in EU, charge EU VAT

Tito cycles through the rules in order, so this should mean:

  1. If the country is NL, it stops at the first rule (charges no tax)

  2. If the country isn't NL but is EU, it stops at the second rule (charges no tax)

  3. If the country isn't NL or EU, neither rule applies, so it doesn't apply any tax

Be sure to follow the rest of the instructions above to complete the setup, especially the part about making the country required otherwise it's not possible for Tito to calculate the correct tax rate.

❓ FAQ: Can Tito automatically calculate the correct tax rate based on the VAT number entered? Not at the moment, unfortunately. We may add this in the future, but in the meantime you can follow this guide to set up custom tax rules.

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If you have any follow-up questions, drop us a line at support@tito.io or chat to us in-app and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can.

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