🎉 FluentCart 1.4.0 - Proper EU VAT and Tax Compliance, Built Into the Core
This is a big one. Maybe the biggest release we have shipped.
For the last two months, we worked closely with industry experts to rebuild how FluentCart handles tax. A full rebuild, not a small patch. And the part I am most proud of: it is all in the core. Free. No addon, no third-party tax service, no monthly fee to stay compliant.
If you sell in the EU, or anywhere with VAT and sales tax rules, this changes things for you.
Here is the heart of it: tax now explains itself everywhere. Checkout, thank-you page, receipt, email, PDF, admin order view, the customer's account. Every place a tax number shows up now breaks it down per item and per rate. No more "why is my tax this amount?" tickets. You just point at the receipt.
The big stuff in 1.4.0:
- Full EU B2B reverse charge. Selling across EU borders to VAT-registered businesses now works end to end. Customer enters their VAT ID, tax gets reversed correctly, and it shows up right on checkout, emails, PDF, and receipts. Even handles stores that advertise tax-inclusive prices.
- Per-item tax breakdown. Every line shows exactly how it was taxed. Clear for the customer, clear for you.
- Mixed cart handling. Tax-inclusive and tax-exclusive products in the same cart now total and display correctly. This used to be a real headache.
- Built-in tax rates for the whole world. Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, all pre-loaded. New stores get a guided tax setup step in onboarding, so you are compliant from day one.
- Pick exactly which EU countries you collect VAT in, register inline, and get a clear warning when a VAT ID is missing instead of finding out later. Plus city/postcode level overrides and per-variation tax control.
Two more worth calling out:
- Store Digest emails. Opt in to a daily, weekly, or monthly summary of your store's key numbers, straight to your inbox.
- Per-item coupon breakdown. Discounts now show per item with strikethrough pricing, so customers see exactly how much each item was discounted.
Underneath all that is a deep list of fixes: 25+ on tax alone, plus solid subscription, payment, and checkout repairs (Paddle is noticeably steadier now).
Quick but important: this release has a few breaking changes if you use custom code. Two filters removed, EU VAT data moved, and a Bricks element renamed. Worth a read before updating if you have customizations. Details in the full post.
I also want to thank Juraj Hudák and Jorge de los Reyes, two people who shaped this release. Juraj's 218-field developer brief became the backbone of the tax model, and Jorge shaped how tax looks to the person actually paying, including the free EU VAT data that means FluentCart never has to call a paid tax service. This release is better because of them.
Full write-up with screenshots: https://fluentcart.com/blog/fluentcart-1-4-0/
If you sell in the EU or deal with VAT at all, update today. This is the release that makes FluentCart genuinely compliant out of the box.
More cooking 🚀
A quick note on updating:
You may not see this latest version right away due to WordPress.org's new security cool-down period. After the 24-hour cool-down, the update will show up as normal.
If you want it instantly, you can use FluentHub (previously FluentKit) to grab the update right away.
FluentHub download: https://static.wpmanageninja.com/fluent-toolkit.zip
didn't test it yet, but a huge shoutout to Shahjahan Jewel and especially Juraj Hudák and Jorge de los Reyes for taking care of the EU-stuff 🎉🔥
Manuel Müller +100!
Thank you, Manuel ! 🙏
The real credit goes to Shahjahan Jewel , Juraj Hudák Sarkar Ripon Rasel Siddiqe Nuhel Syed @juniorninja and the whole team for making it happen. We were just happy to contribute some feedback along the way 😊
Thank you so much for all the continued effort - much appreciated! And it's not just the effort; it 's what comes out at the end: new features, fixes, improvements. THANK YOU!
Tax it s still incomplete per Eu market. 15th of 27tj country has electronic system so Miss a field.
Elena C. Can you please elaborate your concern?
Sarkar Ripon in major country of EU, there is electronic invoice. Electronic invoice need a extra field for add this unique code for each company. And plus need a xml export.
Another cool update
Fantastic! Your continual efforts to make something great are recognized and truly appreciated.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how all the feedback shared together with Juraj Hudák has been materialized in this release!
It's great to see FluentCart taking another big step towards making VAT and tax compliance a seamless reality out of the box, without relying on expensive third-party services or complex workarounds.
Congratulations to the whole team. Excited to test it and see it in action!
PS.: Super cool video as always. Kudos to the marketing team too!
Jorge de los Reyes Thanks a lot !
It does not work for B2B shops. When I set the VAT ID as required, it is buried in a "I am buying for a business" checkmark. If that is not set, the VAT ID does not become available and will not be required. This leads to a transaction without tax which is wrong.
If the VAT ID is mandatory, it must be shown regardless of a checkmark, and it must be checked BEFORE any transaction. For B2B this is currently unusable.
André Daus So, you want "I am buying for a business" Should be checked if any of B2B field is required? am I correct?
Personally, I see the “I am buying as a business” option primarily as a UX feature rather than a tax or compliance feature.
The checkbox can be very useful for some stores because it keeps the checkout cleaner and avoids showing unnecessary fields to consumers. However, I don’t think business-related fields should be tied to that checkbox in a mandatory way. I think this is the point André Daus was trying to share too.
Store owners should be able to decide which fields are displayed, hidden, required or optional, regardless of whether the customer selects “I am buying as a business” or not.
For example:
- Some stores may want to use the checkbox and reveal Company Name, VAT Number or Tax ID only when needed.
- Some B2B stores may want those fields displayed directly without any additional step.
- Some mixed B2C/B2B stores may want different checkout experiences depending on the product being sold.
In my opinion, the goal should be maximum flexibility. The checkbox should be available as a UX tool, but it should not dictate how business fields behave.
This is also why I think checkout forms (similar to SureCart) could be very valuable in the future. They would allow store owners to create different checkout experiences depending on the product, audience or use case.
For example, a store selling both to consumers and businesses could have:
- A consumer-oriented checkout using the “I am buying as a business” toggle.
- A dedicated B2B checkout where all required business fields are shown directly.
- Product-specific checkouts with completely different field requirements.
- And the general /checkout/ settings with it’s global config.
That would make FluentCart much more flexible for real-world business scenarios 😅
Jorge de los Reyes agreed with most of this, and the flexibility argument is the right direction.
I'd add one layer though: for B2B stores specifically, this isn't just a UX question. The VAT ID field drives tax logic whether VAT is applied, and whether reverse charge text appears on the invoice. If a buyer can skip the checkbox and therefore never see the VAT ID field, the store doesn't just get a messier checkout, it generates legally incorrect invoices for every cross-border B2B sale.
Sarkar Ripon, so the flexibility needs to include a hard setting: VAT ID required, always visible, independent of any checkbox. Not as a UX option the store owner might configure, but as the correct default for a B2B store.
Everything else in your comment (per-product checkouts, consumer vs. business flows, the checkbox as an optional UX layer) I'm fully in favour of. That would make FluentCart genuinely usable for EU merchants. It just needs the compliance layer underneath it to be solid first.
On the custom checkout forms point: FluentForms integration would be the natural fit here. Keep the standard checkout form as the default, but allow store owners to replace it with a FluentForms form where needed. That would give full control over field order, labels, required/optional logic, and address structure without FluentCart having to solve every regional variation itself. The two products are already in the same ecosystem, so this seems like a logical bridge.
André Daus We agree 100% in this. On my feedback, I was assuming that the TAX ID is always required haha.
So, yes. Hopefully we can see this soon. Because as you mentioned, if this required feature does not work or can be skipped... the issue is real 😅
Thank you so much for this! This alone will put you far ahead of all the other Cart-tools. I know of no other tool that is able to replicate what you build there. Will definately recommend 🎉
Shahjahan Jewel YESSSS finally create/update a B2B customer VAT number from admin 🤩
Natascha Vantuykom oh i was about to check this, great news !
Thank you for EU Tax, amazing job 👍
and big up to Juraj Hudák and Jorge de los Reyes 🙏
Next stop : Global attributes 😀
then FluentCart will be a beast !
Great. I'm going to test that tomorrow. I really hope to use it one day. I need to be able to set a tax rule based on my product type. Simply. And not this priority rule that I still don't understand. Unfortunately, all B2B transactions must go through Peppol in Belgium, Italy, Germany and all the others... So I'm afraid that's not possible at the moment. If anyone has an additional tool, I'll take it. I have 8 types of products with 8 different VAT rules. Tax at the buyer's location, tax at the trainer's location, 0% tax for extra-muros transactions,... I would like to create these rules and apply them simply to my products. That's it. If I can do that. No more Woocommerce. For now, let's celebrate the progress already made. Thank you
DAVID MOUSSEBOIS Could you kindly try using our current tax feature to see if it meets your requirements? Please feel free to share your feedback if you encounter any issues.
Sarkar Ripon I would like to but it's impossible to update to version 1.4.1 pro, already changed since yesterday. It is not available on my account.
Shahjahan Jewel please add the CPF field for Brasil. (similar to TIN number) and queryable in the orders windows. This is a Must have here. 🔥
Mercado pago can collect CPF but this information doesn't stay saved attached to the user.
marcelo angelim Can you please help me elaborating your use case?
Sarkar Ripon would be nice if VAT / company id number and company name can be columns in the order list where we can search on
Sarkar Ripon In Brazil, CPF works similarly to a TIN (Tax Identification Number) — it’s the main tax ID for individuals and is required in virtually every purchase. For e-commerce, CPF is essential because it’s the primary way to identify customers, even more than email. Many customers use different email addresses for different purchases, but CPF always stays the same.
Being able to search orders by CPF would be a huge improvement for Brazilian stores. It also helps identify whether a customer is an individual (CPF) or a business (CNPJ — the Brazilian business tax ID). Any Brazilian user or developer can confirm this is standard practice here and a must-have for local e-commerce.
marcelo angelim any TIN verification involved or just a field is enough? if just a field is enough why not using existing vat/gst/tin field?
just asking for more clarification
Sarkar Ripon yes, theres a validation:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/cpf-cnpj-validator
a valid value is necessary for multiple purposes like integrations with shipping providers that require de CPF of the buyer.
Sarkar Ripon i tried to vibe code a solution with claude but the result was only partially achieved as desired.
I asked claude to use the similar approach to eu vat field and register it in the database, dashboard of the order and in the wp user profile.
the value show up in the wp profile but I couldn't make it show up in the orders page neither in the order information, bellow the email of the user.
I asked claude to read Fcart hooks documentation and the unnoficial mcp I found here. Also used the novamira plugin, all locally.
Sarkar Ripon feature request:
please add the option to allways show Company name and VAT/Business ID, regardless this checkbox is checked
Question about Full EU B2B reverse charge.
Does it check whether the VAT is correct or it assumes everything is correct and just grants it? At least symbol counts should be taken into account, everything else auto checking VAT is much more work, but simple symbols check could be done....
Thank you, thank you, thank you to the entire FluentCart team, and especially to Shahjahan Jewel, Sarkar Ripon, Rasel Siddiqe, Nuhel Syed, and @juniorninja, for being open to changes, listening to your community and its needs, and most importantly, for actually bringing those changes into the product.
I really appreciate the way all the requests were handled and implemented. I believe it will get even better, because there is always room for improvement. I am already looking forward to the next releases.
Finally, a big thank you to Jorge de los Reyes for his great guidance and support.
Hello FluentCart team, please help us with more than just the CPF (Brazilian tax identification number). Hi FluentCart team, in addition to the CPF (Brazilian tax ID), please help us to ALLOW shipping cost calculation. Is there any documentation for interaction?
Paulo Beneton I am also looking for this feature. Shahjahan Jewel