Taxation¶

django-invoicing resolves the applicable VAT rate per invoice through a taxation policy — a class that encapsulates the tax rules for a given jurisdiction.

How the policy is resolved¶

When invoice.get_tax_rate() is called (e.g. by Item.calculate_tax()), the following logic runs:

If INVOICING_TAXATION_POLICY is set, that class is used unconditionally.
If the invoice's supplier_country is an EU member state, EUTaxationPolicy is used automatically.
Otherwise, TaxationPolicy.get_default_tax() is used, which returns INVOICING_TAX_RATE from settings (or None if not set).

EUTaxationPolicy¶

invoicing.taxation.eu.EUTaxationPolicy implements the standard EU VAT rules:

Scenario	Tax rate returned
Supplier and customer are in the same country	Default rate for that country
Customer is a private person in another EU country	Default rate for the supplier's country
Customer is a company in another EU country with a VAT ID that fails VIES validation	Default rate for the supplier's country
Customer is a company in another EU country with a valid VIES VAT ID	`None` (reverse charge)
Customer is outside the EU (private or business)	`None` (not applicable)

Private person vs. company

The policy uses the presence of a customer_vat_id to distinguish private persons (no VAT ID) from companies (VAT ID set).

Per-country default rates¶

Rates are defined in EUTaxationPolicy.EU_COUNTRIES_RATES. Some countries define date-based rate schedules (e.g. Slovakia switched from 20% to 23% on 2025-01-01):

'SK': [
    {"from": date.min, "to": date(2024, 12, 31), "rate": Decimal(20)},
    {"from": date(2025, 1, 1), "to": date.max,   "rate": Decimal(23)},
],

The date_tax_point field on the invoice is used to select the correct rate when a country has multiple date ranges.

VIES validation¶

The EU policy validates customer VAT IDs against the VIES service. Disable this check (e.g. for testing or offline environments) with:

INVOICING_USE_VIES_VALIDATOR = False

When disabled, any cross-border B2B transaction is treated as reverse charge without VIES confirmation.

Reverse charge¶

EUTaxationPolicy.is_reverse_charge(supplier_vat_id, customer_vat_id) returns True when:

Both VAT IDs are set.
The supplier is in an EU country.
The supplier and customer are in different countries.

Writing a custom taxation policy¶

Subclass TaxationPolicy and implement get_tax_rate():

from decimal import Decimal
from invoicing.taxation import TaxationPolicy


class MyTaxationPolicy(TaxationPolicy):
    @classmethod
    def get_tax_rate(cls, supplier_vat_id, customer_vat_id, date_tax_point=None):
        # Return a Decimal rate, 0 for zero-rated, or None for not applicable
        return Decimal('10')

Register it:

INVOICING_TAXATION_POLICY = 'myapp.taxation.MyTaxationPolicy'

The get_tax_rate_by_invoice(invoice) classmethod is also available for override when you need access to the full invoice object.