Blanket 20% / 0% VAT rates in the UK is not appropriate

Hello. I'm part-way through building my new squarespace store. We sell printed goods. As you may be aware, the VAT on printed goods in the UK is not 20% flat rate. For example, leaflets are VAT free as they are ephemeral in nature, whereas posters are charged +20% VAT as they are deemed to have a longer useful life. This is UK tax law.

Imagine my horror when I discover at a very late stage that "It's not possible to set different tax rates based on the product." I am staggered to learn this. The option to set a tax rate by product is something shopify has offered since God was a boy. 

Has anyone else come across this issue? Are squarespace looking at fixing this?

Sadly this is a recognised limitation. Squarespace cannot be used when VAT rates differ between physical products. There are other threads on this subject.

Product Tax

Need to be able to apply tax rates by individual product category

Configuring Different Tax Rates for Products EU

wow. this has been a known feature request for years and still it's not fixed? how do SQSP expect to be seen as a legitimate alternative to shopify (great on tax / sites look like crap)? Guess it's back to shopify and I'll write off 2 weeks of work. Nice one SQSP!

I may have found a fairly ugly workaround.

set 0% VAT products as ‘services’. Set global VAT rate as 20%. Set ‘digital and services’ as 0% VAT rate. Create products and then add a custom data collection form to the 0% VAT products ONLY to capture delivery address at point of order. 20% VAT products capture delivery address in checkout. Delivery addresses captured for each item, and the correct VAT rate is charged.

This is INSANE! Just nearing launch and come across this issue, I might need to abort my whole build and use Shopify, even though the shop part of the website is small amount of stock. Any additional workarounds that people have discovered?

@CaptainGrumblebum thanks for your suggestion, I could just about make it work but it is stretch. Essentially all my existing service products have 20% vat where as my physical products are 0% (books). So I'd need to pretend all the books are services and and all the services are physical products. GRIM.

Does anyone know if this has been resolved in the new refresh? 

4 hours ago, Titania said:

Does anyone know if this has been resolved in the new refresh? 

There are no updates to VAT handling. 

On 9/25/2024 at 2:08 PM, paul2009 said:

There are no updates to VAT handling. 

Thanks for letting me know.  This is such a shame.