Vat options for a shop in Germany

Hi there,

I'm working on a Webshop that needs to have 2 sales tax options, 7% and 19%, depending on the product. The shop is in Germany and it's mandatory. Any Ideas on how to do this or how to work around it? Hope I'm not the only German using Squarespace e-commerce 😁

3 hours ago, ziska said:

I'm working on a Webshop that needs to have 2 sales tax options, 7% and 19%, depending on the product.

This isn't possible on Squarespace. You cannot have more than one VAT/sales tax rate on a Squarespace site.

Yes I know, this does seem crazy for an eCommerce solution in 2023 and I wish I had better news.

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Thank you Paul! Have you had that case before? I think I'll use Shopify as the shop platform and try to either implement that into the squarespace site or have 2 different platforms, which kind of sucks for the client.

24 minutes ago, ziska said:

Have you had that case before?

Yes, many times. 🥲 

In the UK, the standard VAT rate is 20% but some products like children’s car seats have a reduced rate of 5% and products like food are zero-rated. Squarespace cannot cope with multiple VAT rates and so I’ve been advocating for this for many years. See my list of Squarespace Commerce Limitations for full details. 

Please add to the many requests for this feature by raising a feature request. You can do this by contacting Squarespace Customer Care using a support ticket. 

Same issue I have with my shop in Germany... did open a support ticket. And yes, just like you, I really like working with squarespace, I don't want to have 2 different platforms.

What's your solution so far? Just use Shopify?

4 hours ago, ziska said:

What's your solution so far? Just use Shopify?

Yes, because it isn't possible to change it.

I continue to lobby Squarespace's international product teams to fix this, but I appreciate that it is complex for them to change this now (because of design choices that were made ten years ago).

In the meantime, it's one of those limitations that requires me to use Shopify - even though it isn't as straightforward to use and sites aren't as beautiful.

I'm also having this issue. I love squarespace as a platform to use, but to sell an 'ecommerce' platform into the EU without this functionality is incredibly disingenuous. Especially for a €30+ cost per month. At the very least squarespace need to make this information very clearly visible before hours of development time have been wasted.

If you go on squarespaces website the products they use in example websites would fall under different tax rates in Germany, so if you used the website in the way they are advertising you would be breaking the law...

Everything on these forums points to this having been an issue for a long time, it leaves a bit of a bitter taste.