Tax Collection

Cavuno can add sales tax, VAT, or GST to your board's checkouts automatically. Tax collection is driven entirely by your connected Stripe account: when you activate Stripe Tax and add your registrations, Cavuno detects that your account is tax-active and starts collecting on the next checkout. There is no separate toggle in Cavuno to keep in sync, and boards that have not set up Stripe Tax are completely unaffected.

You are the merchant of record for every board checkout, because all payments are direct charges on your connected Stripe account. That means the registrations and the tax liability are yours, and tax setup happens in your own Stripe Dashboard.

Prerequisites

Complete Stripe onboarding and obtain professional advice about where you are registered or required to register. Have the business origin address, product tax treatment, and customer-location requirements ready before activating Stripe Tax.

Turn on tax collection

1. Open your Stripe Dashboard and go to Settings then Tax then Business information
2. Complete Stripe Tax activation (set your origin address and defaults)
3. Add a registration for each place where you are registered to collect tax, under Settings then Tax then Registrations
4. Under Include tax in prices, choose No if you want tax added on top of your plan prices. The default, Automatic, treats every currency except USD and CAD as tax-inclusive
5. That is it. Cavuno picks up the change and starts adding tax to your checkouts

In Cavuno, confirm the state on Settings then Products, then open Taxes. The drawer title is Tax collection. If Stripe Tax is not active yet, the drawer is an empty state with Set up in Stripe. It is read-only: Cavuno never writes tax settings, tax codes, or registrations on your behalf.

What the taxes drawer shows

The drawer reads your connected Stripe account. What you see depends on how far setup has gone:

• Not set up — an empty state titled Set up Stripe Tax, with a Set up in Stripe button that opens Settings then Tax then Business information. Cavuno shows this until Stripe reports the connected account as tax-active.
• Active, no registrations — Stripe Tax status No registrations, plus the live settings below. Stripe collects nothing at checkout until you add a registration. Click Stripe Tax or Registrations to add one in Stripe.
• Active — Stripe Tax status Active, plus the live settings below. Buyers are charged based on the registrations you have added.

Once Stripe Tax is active, the drawer also shows:

• Include tax in prices — Automatic, Yes, or No, matching Stripe. Automatic treats USD and CAD as exclusive and every other currency as inclusive, so a EUR 89 plan stays EUR 89 with VAT carved out of it. Opens Stripe Business information.
• Default product category — the tax code Stripe applies to prices Cavuno creates. A Nontaxable category yields zero tax at checkout. Opens Stripe Business information.
• Head office — the business origin country. This is not a registration, and Stripe does not collect anywhere merely because the head office is set. Opens Stripe Business information.
• Registrations — each country Stripe will collect in, with the type (Standard, EU OSS, IOSS, and similar), or None. An EU OSS registration collects VAT on sales to other EU countries; a domestic sale in that country still needs a Standard registration. Opens Stripe Registrations.

Each of those rows opens the matching Stripe page. Cavuno does not change these values.

Active means Stripe has your business information and will run a calculation on every checkout. It does not mean you have registrations. Stripe only collects in the places where you have added one, so an account can be tax-active and still collect nothing until the first registration is in.

Where these settings live in Stripe

Change them in your Stripe Dashboard, on the connected account for this board:

• Settings then Tax then Business information — origin address, Include tax in prices, and the default product category
• Settings then Tax then Registrations — add or update where you collect
• Settings then Tax then Integrations — Stripe shows a notice here when you have not added a registration for a country you sell into, for example "You haven't added a tax registration for Germany yet"

What buyers see at checkout

When your account is tax-active, Cavuno asks Stripe to calculate tax on each checkout based on the buyer's location:

• Stripe's calculated tax is shown as a separate line before the buyer pays
• Buyers enter address information used for the calculation
• Business buyers can enter a VAT or tax ID. Stripe applies a reverse charge only when the transaction and jurisdiction meet the applicable conditions

Where your connected account has no active registration, Stripe can return zero tax. A checkout or invoice can still fail or remain incomplete when customer-location data or tax configuration is invalid.

Tax on invoice billing

The pay-by-invoice flow works the same way, with one difference. Because the hosted invoice page is read-only for the payer, the buyer's VAT or tax ID has to be captured up front. When tax collection is active, the billing step on the submission form shows an optional tax ID field. The ID is stored on the Stripe customer so the finalized invoice is reverse-charged where applicable.

See Invoice billing for the rest of the invoice flow.

What Cavuno does not do

Cavuno does not choose product tax codes, registrations, filing obligations, exemptions, or where you collect. Those decisions and the supplied customer data determine Stripe's calculation. Stripe Tax automates parts of calculation and collection; it does not transfer the merchant's legal responsibility to Cavuno or Stripe.

Verify tax collection

Cavuno has no separate test mode for a live connected account, so test with a real checkout on your board. Create a coupon in Cavuno (Settings → Products → ... → Coupons) for a partial discount, complete the purchase, and refund it from the Stripe Dashboard. Do not use a 100% coupon for this: a fully discounted order has nothing to tax, so the tax line shows zero even when everything is configured correctly.

Exercise at least one registered location, one unregistered location, and a business tax ID relevant to your market. Confirm the Cavuno drawer matches what you set in Stripe: Tax collection with Stripe Tax Active, Include tax in prices, the product category, and a registration for the test buyer's country (Standard when the sale is domestic). Inspect Stripe's calculation details on the payment, and verify the displayed amount matches that configuration. Ask a qualified adviser to review the setup for the jurisdictions where you sell.

Example

For example, test the same plan with a customer address inside an active registration and one outside it. Compare Stripe's calculation details rather than assuming a zero result is correct merely because checkout completed.

Troubleshoot tax status

If Cavuno still shows Stripe Tax as Set up, confirm Stripe Tax activation and registrations belong to the connected account for this board. If checkout cannot calculate tax, inspect the Stripe error for missing customer location or configuration data. Do not bypass a failed calculation by promising the buyer a tax treatment manually.

Troubleshoot zero tax at checkout

If the checkout tax line reads zero, work through these in order. Each one produces a zero result on its own.

1. No registration for the buyer's country. Open Settings then Products then Taxes. The drawer lists registered countries, or None. Click Registrations to add one in Stripe. If the buyer's country is missing, or listed only as EU OSS for a domestic sale, Stripe collects nothing there. In Stripe go to Settings then Tax then Integrations or Registrations. A notice such as "You haven't added a tax registration for Germany yet" means Stripe collects nothing there. Click Add registration. Setting the head office address does not register you anywhere.
2. Prices are treated as tax-inclusive. The drawer shows Include tax in prices. Automatic makes every currency other than USD and CAD inclusive, so a EUR 89 plan stays EUR 89 with VAT carved out of it instead of added on top. In Stripe under Settings then Tax then Business information, choose No to add tax to the displayed price. Existing plan prices pick up the new default on the next checkout.
3. The buyer has not entered a full address. Checkout calculates only once the country and postal code are in. The figure shown before that is not a result.
4. A full discount was applied. A 100% coupon reduces the taxable amount to zero. Retest with a partial discount.
5. A domestic business buyer. A business in the same country as your head office is charged tax normally. Reverse charge, which produces a zero line, applies to cross-border business sales only.
6. Union OSS does not cover domestic sales. An EU One-Stop Shop (OSS) registration collects VAT on sales to other EU countries. A German buyer of a German seller needs a Germany VAT registration with status Collecting, not OSS alone. Stripe's taxability reason in that case is typically not_collecting.
7. The default product tax category is nontaxable. The drawer shows Default product category. In Stripe under Settings then Tax then Business information, it must be a taxable category such as General - Electronically Supplied Services. Cavuno does not set a tax code on the prices it creates, so a Nontaxable default yields €0.00 with taxability reason product_exempt or not_subject_to_tax.

If all seven check out and the line is still zero, open the payment in Stripe Dashboard, open Tax on that payment, and read the taxability reason Stripe applied. Common values are not_collecting (no registration for that jurisdiction), product_exempt / not_subject_to_tax (product tax code), reverse_charge (cross-border B2B with a valid VAT ID), and customer_exempt.

Next steps

Repeat these test cases for both card checkout and invoice billing, then retain evidence of the settings reviewed with your adviser.

To collect contact name, PO number, or other purchasing references at card Checkout and on the invoice billing form, see Buyer fields. Phone is collected only at card Checkout. These fields are separate from billing address and tax IDs.