Activating reverse charge for foreign sales

Goal

Correctly apply (or remove) VAT on the invoice based on the customer’s country/type, for sales abroad (EU and non-EU).

Prerequisites

• A POP plan that includes reverse charge (a paid feature: without an enabled plan the fields stay visible but disabled).
• VAT rates configured in WooCommerce (WooCommerce > Settings > Tax) — a step not handled by POP but necessary for everything to work.

Steps

1. Go to POP → Electronic Invoice - Settings, Checkout tab, Reverse Charge section.
2. Enable “Activate reverse charge (globally)” (or activate it per product, if you’d rather not apply it globally).
3. Enable “Activate VIES validation”: this is a required step, not optional — reverse charge won’t activate without VIES validation of the customer’s VAT number. If your hosting can’t validate the VAT number, check that the SoapClient PHP extension is enabled on the server (ask your hosting provider).
4. In “Tax classes”, select the zero-rate tax class to use for reverse charge: POP automatically detects, among the tax classes configured in WooCommerce, those with a 0% rate (usually the class is called “Zero rate”, but the name isn’t binding: what matters is the rate).
5. Set the nature code and regulatory reference for each of the 5 handled scenarios: EU individuals, EU companies with validated VIES, EU companies without validated VIES, non-EU individuals, non-EU companies. Check with your accountant for the correct values case by case.
6. If you use an add-on that transmits to an external accounting software, make sure the same nature codes are also configured in that software.

Verify

Make a test purchase with a real, valid EU VAT number: if everything is configured correctly, VAT is removed from the cart and the invoice shows the nature code expected for the corresponding scenario.

Common errors

• The site can’t validate the customer’s VAT number — likely a server-side issue: check that SoapClient is available (needed to query the VIES service).
• Reverse charge doesn’t activate even though you’ve checked it — check that “Activate VIES validation” is also enabled: without VIES, reverse charge stays inactive by design.
• You can’t find a zero-rate tax class to select — the menu only shows classes with a 0% rate actually configured in WooCommerce: create one in Settings > Tax if it doesn’t exist yet.

Related configuration

For the table of nature codes to apply based on the seller’s tax regime, see tax-regime-invoicing-rules.