VAT Tax (EU from UK) not displaying on shopping basket

Question

The VAT Tax breakdown isn't being shown on the shopping basket when a visitor adds a product to it. If they go to checkout, and then back (without doing anything in checkout), it will display the breakdown. Otherwise it just displays a sub total and total (which are exactly the same).

The settings we have configured are:

• Tax calculation method based on: Unit Price
• Tax Calculation Based On: Shipping Address
• Catalog Prices: Excluding Tax
• Delivery Prices: Excluding Tax
• Apply Customer Tax: After Discount
• Apply Discount On Prices: Excluding Tax
• Default Country: UK
• Default State/Post Code: *

Shopping Cart Display Settings

• Prices: Excluding Tax
• Sub Total: Excluding Tax
• Delivery Amount: Incl. and Excl. Tax
• Include Tax in Grand Total: No (Even on yes, this just shows two prices exactly the same, without VAT being added on).

There are several Tax rates set up, one for each applicable country at 20%. The Tax Rule is applied to retail customers and taxable goods; the issue seems to happen when multiple tax rates are selected (if I just select the UK VAT one, prices display as expected, otherwise if I select them all, it only displays ex VAT in everything).

Any ideas? I've followed both magento guides/documentation and other blog posts on doing this, and none of them help resolve the issue unfortunately.

Answer 1

This is most likely due to the Tax Origin not being set correctly (it's probably on its default: US). This is different from the Default Country setting, you can find it at System -> Configuration -> [SALES] Tax -> Origin.

Let me know if it works! :)

Answer 2

When importing the tax rate from a CSV there was a missing column of default which can have a 1 inside it to represent which tax rate is the default tax rate.

I was using the CSV from http://www.mcnab.co/blog/e-commerce/magento/magento-vat-setup-for-countries-trading-worldwide/ which was missing several columns compared to the Magento export version. So I had to re-import the tax rates to fix the issue.

The columns missed (following the Rate column) were Zip/Post is Range, Range From, Range To and default which can all be left blank (except I placed a 1 in the default tax rate I wanted to use, e.g. UK VAT)

Hope that helps anyone else that encounters this issue.