thread Re: UK VAT (tax) rates for online sales in Payments Troubleshooting

UK VAT exclusion rules not applying to Online sales

Tom15 — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 10:39:49 GMT

The title of this thread has been edited by a Square Moderator from the original: UK VAT (tax) rates for online sales

Hi guys

Some items in the UK are 20% for dine-in and 0% for takeaway

For in person ordering, all items are set to 20% and then an exclusion rule for some items are used if dining option Takeaway is used - which works fine

However for Square Online orders, which are all Takeaway naturally, the exclusion rule doesn't apply.

What is the best way around this? I would not be looking to create separate items for online due to the high volume of extra admin this would demand

Many thanks
Tom

Re: UK VAT (tax) rates for online sales

_Violet — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:46:29 GMT

Hi @Tom15 👋 Thanks for reaching out to the Square Community with your question.

Hmmm...it sounds like the VAT rate you've set up for your in-person orders is applying to your Online Orders as well for some reason 🤔 I recommend double-checking your Tax Settings for Square Online here to make sure everything looks correct. The settings for your in-person Sales Tax are located in a separate section of your Dashboard here. Additionally, you can read more about creating and managing your VAT settings here in our Support Center.

I'm also going to tag in a few of our Square Champions located in the UK who also use Square Online to see if they have any additional suggestions for you 🙂 @Phillipsrw @Sam_400º @signature_home

Re: UK VAT (tax) rates for online sales

TomDrew — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 11:07:20 GMT

Re: UK VAT (tax) rates for online sales

Tom15 — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 11:05:27 GMT

@_Violet thanks for your reply!

I am using item based VAT rate. The problem is without the exclusion rule all items are being rated at 20%, when I need some items to have no VAT as they are takeaway.

Hope this makes sense?