note# I want to reopen the ticket 'proper EU vat support' http://magento.uservoice.com/pages/24441-magento-community-edition-roadmap/suggestions/278171-proper-eu-vat-support beacause IMHO its not 'completed' nor 'resolved'

For EU shopholders that are doing business with other business this is essential:

User is either a (from the shopowner point of view)
1- EU or Non-EU national/international CONSUMER
2- EU national BUSINESS
3- EU international BUSINESS with a valid EU-VAT number
4- EU international BUSINESS with a invalid EU-VAT number
5- Non-EU international BUSINESS
number

* Customers with their Billing Address in your Stores Default Tax Country are assigned to a dedicated Customer Group or Tax Class, allowing to bill the VAT of your country.
* Valid EU Businesses with valid VAT number are assigned to a dedicated Customer Group or Tax Class to allow Tax excempt. The EU VAT number is checked against the VIES VAT Number Validation Site.
* EU Endusers, with the Billing Address located in a EU membership country and no VAT number, are assigned to a dedicated Customer Group or Tax Class, to bill the VAT of your shops country.
* International Customers, with the Billing Address located outside of the EU, are assigned to a dedicated Customer Group or Tax Class (to be set to Tax Excempt).

There probably should be a dedicated setting for this as it is in a different philosophy than the tax module that already exists. Also the versions 1.4 alpha are not provideing this. This is mainly focussed on the US where some states have tax and others don't. In theEU a product ALWAYS has tax (of course some exceptions here and there). As a rule of thumb commercial goods always have VAT.

As all EU-countries (not only the euro-countries!) deal with this the exact same way, there really is a very clear system that should be applied to ALLEU-countries.

The tax-system that currently exists needs a huge amount of configuration and work-arounds to get it working with EU-vat. As the Magento system has so much potential and great support I am sure that many EU-companies really want to use Magento, but are held back by the unclear situation on EU-VAT.

Also there is no real time vat number verification in magentocommerce right now. Shopholders must verify that VAT number before selling goods without VAT. When in the end VAT numbers are incorrect, not valid, or fake, the shopowners must pay the vat themselves to their national government. there is a extension http://www.magentocommerce.com/extension/1438/euvat-tax-calculation-for-eu-based-ecommerce that can do this but that one is not validating the VAT input an dif it works with 1.4 releases....