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pshep's avatar
Level 1

Dealing with inclusive tax and Spark.

I learned today that Spark does not deal with inclusive tax (on the Stripe platform, at least) - thanks to some very quick feedback from the Spark team!

That is fine, as I can let Stripe handle the VAT calculations, in fact this is even preferable. However I ran into some issues at this point - when leaving Spark and being directed to a Stripe checkout, there is no VAT in sight. Also not mentioned on the generated invoices.

Making a custom URL for my Stripe product shows the VAt info correctly, which is what I want. We obviously can't use this option in Spark - but it did proove that Spark is somehow stopping VAT info from showing.

After some digging, it looks like Spark/Cashier is simply setting the tax calculation to false inside the vendor files (inside Cashier.php if anyone is wondering). Changing this to true activates VAT calculation in the Stripe checkout, as expected. I cannot see any option to turn this on within the Spark docs and allow Stripe handle tax stuff for multiple countries.

Is there any way to achieve this without altering vendor files, something I am missing perhaps?

Thanks in advance

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pshep's avatar
Level 1

Resolved: I found a function in the Cashier class which enabled tax calculation, making this a super easy fix! Inside SparkServiceProvider I simply call the method which enables tax calculations like so:

Cashier::calculateTaxes();

And presto, inclusive taxes are now handled by Stripe in the checkout process, and also appear on invoices. Spark shows the full price without any tax info, which is typical.

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