Value Added Tax (VAT)

Value added tax is attached to the product price and service fees in some jurisdictions.

By default, HCL Commerce lists product prices without taxes included in the product display page. Only after some products are added to the shopping cart as an order item can the tax amount be calculated according to the order item's address (the ship-to address) and fulfillment center (the ship-from address). Tax law in many jurisdictions, such as most European countries, Australia, Singapore, and so on, requires sales taxes be included in the price of a product. The prices are usually loaded from back-end systems with the VAT amount included.

Aspects of the VAT tax model:
  • The VAT tax model is incompatible with the default HCL Commerce tax model and can be enabled at store level or site level as required
  • When the VAT model is enabled, you will need to load the tax included product price into HCL Commerce
  • When the VAT model is enabled, the different types of charges in HCL Commerce have VAT included
  • Promotions and shipping calculations are all based on the VAT included amount
  • The product prices with VAT included can be easily displayed on all product display pages and order pages
Charge related columns in some tables and behavior differences between the VAT model and HCL Commerce's default model:
VAT model Default tax model
offerprice Offer price with tax included Offer price without tax included
orderitems.price offerprice.price, with tax included offerprice.price, without tax
orderitems.totalproduct orderitems.price * orderitems.quantity orderitems.price * orderitems.quantity
orderitems.totaladjustment Tax included Tax excluded
orderitems.taxamount Product tax amount (no change) Product tax amount
orderitems.shipcharge Shipping charge with shipping tax included Shipping charge
orderitems.shiptaxamount Shipping tax amount(no change) Shipping tax amount
The grand total of an orderitem orderitems.totalproduct + orderitems.totaladjustment + orderitems.shipcharge

VAT amount is already included in the other columns and the standalone tax amounts are for informational purposes only.

orderitems.totalproduct + orderitems.totaladjustment + orderitems.shipcharge + orderitems.taxamount + orderitems.shiptaxamount
Corresponding columns in the orders table Same as order item level's Same as order item level's