Magento is developed as a US system. Consequently, it does not cope with international address issues sufficiently.

1. In France the departements are part of the address, in Holland the provinces are not. So in Magento, it should be possible to enable/disable the field "State / province / county".

2. In the US postal code are place behind the city name, in Germany the required position is _in front of_ the city name. This option also needs a checkbox. on a per country basis.

3. The way people are addressed varies widely, from "Dear Bill Clinton" through "Sehr geehrte frau Doktor Merkel". For German and Dutch (a.o.) you need to have separate first and last names, a gender code and seperate fields for letter/mail addressing and envelop/shipping addressing. Some research and thought is needed to determine the way this feature is best implemented.

How the settings of state, postal code and personal addressing should be depends on the country at hand. So the settings need to be (pre)stored in the the Countries table of the database.

HERE ..A COUPLE OF FEATURE OF THIS IDEA
(also this feature are avalaible ..already on other ecommerce tools)

**Listing Creation
-Bulk Upload Listings
-Single Product Listings
-Template Listings
-Save Listing Drafts

--Listing Enhancements
-Custom Listing Layout Templates

**Integrated Inventory Control
-Listings are linked to Products
-Inventory levels automatically increase and decrease

**Listing Management
-Auction Synchronization
-At a glance status
◦ High Bidder
◦ Current Price
◦ Reserve Price Met
◦ Etc...
-Archive Completed Listings
-End listings directly from Magento

**Productivity Tools
-Efficient Category Selection
-Browse Categories
-Recently Used Categories
-Bulk Upload Listings
-Save All references for Quick Listings

**Magento Integration
-Product Level Inventory Settings
-Linked Product Details and Images

**Storefront Display Module
-Display your auction items
-Display other seller’s items
-eBay Affiliate Integration
-Earn commission on referrals

**Seller Detail Settings
-About Us
-Contact Us
-Payment
-Shipping
-Terms of Sale

**Popular Listing Formats
-eBay Auction Items
-eBay Store Inventory Format

**Flexible Pricing Options
-Use Product’s Online Price or List Price
-Offset Product Price +/- any value
-Reserve Price Support
-Buy It Now Support

**Photos and Picture Gallery
-Generates Gallery views automatically
-Integrates with Magento image search

**Full eBay Shipping Support
-Item Location
-Domestic Flat
-Domestic Calculated
-Local Pickup
-International Flat
-International Calculated
-Shipping and Handling
-Discounts
-World Services and Locations
-Insurance
-Get it Fast option

**eBay Item Specifics
-Improved search and visibility
-Add Attributes Quickly

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....