NAME
    Business::Tax::VAT - perform European VAT calculations

SYNOPSIS
      use Business::Tax::VAT;

      my $vat = Business::Tax::VAT->new(qw/uk ie/);

      my $price = $vat->item(120 => 'ie');
      my $price_to_customer = $price->full;     # 120
      my $vat_charged       = $price->vat;      #  20
      my $net_price_to_me   = $price->net;      # 100

      my $price = $vat->business_item(100 => 'uk');
      my $price_to_customer = $price->full;     # 117.5
      my $vat_charged       = $price->vat;      #  17.5
      my $net_price_to_me   = $price->net;      # 100

DESCRIPTION
    Charging VAT across the European Union is quite complex. The rate of tax
    you have to charge depends on whether you're dealing with consumers or
    corporations, what types of goods you're selling, whether you've crossed
    thresholds in certain countries, etc.

    This module aims to make some of this simpler.

    There are several key processes:

CONSTRUCTING A VAT OBJECT
  new
      my $vat = Business::Tax::VAT->new(@country_codes);

    First of all you have to construct a VAT object, providing it with a
    list of countries for which you have to charge VAT. This may only be the
    country in which you are trading, or it may be any of the 15 EC
    territories in which VAT is collected.

    The full list of territories, and their abbreviations, is documented
    below.

PRICING AN ITEM
  item / business_item
      my $price = $vat->item($unit_price => $country_code);
      my $price = $vat->business_item($unit_price => $country_code);

    You create a Price object by calling either the 'item' or
    'business_item' constructor, with the unit price, and the country to
    which you are supplying the goods. This operates on the priciple that
    prices to consumers are quoted with VAT included, but prices to business
    are quoted ex-VAT.

    If you do not supply a country code, it will default to the first
    country in the country list passed to VAT->new;

CALCULATING THE COMPONENT PRICES
  full / vat / net
      my $price_to_customer = $price->full;
      my $vat_charged       = $price->vat;
      my $net_price_to_me   = $price->net;

    Once we have our price, we can query it for either the 'full' price that
    will be charged (including VAT), the 'net' price (excluding VAT), and
    the 'vat' portion itself.

NON-VATABLE COUNTRIES
    If you send goods to many countries, some of which are in your VAT
    territory and others not, you can avoid surrounding this code in
    conditionals by calling $vat->item on all items anyway, listing the
    country to which you are supplying the goods.

    If the country in question is not one of the territories in which you
    should charge VAT then the 'full' and 'net' values will be the same, and
    'vat' will be zero.

NON-VATABLE, ZERO-RATED, REDUCED-RATE GOODS
    This module does not cope with goods which are not at the 'standard'
    rate of VAT for a country (as detailed below).

    Patches welcomed!

COUNTRIES AND RATES
    This module uses the following rates and codes:

      at, Austria, 20%
      be, Belgium, 21%
      cy, Cyprus, 15%
      cz, Czech Republic, 19%
      dk, Denmark, 25%
      ee, Estonia, 18%
      fi, Finland, 22%
      fr, France, 19.6%
      de, Germany, 19%
      gr, Greece, 17.5%
      hu, Hungary, 25%
      ie, Ireland, 21%
      it, Italy, 22%
      lv, Latvia, 18%
      lt, Lithuania, 17.5%
      lu, Luxembourg, 15%
      mt, Malta, 18%
      nl, The Netherlands, 19%
      pl, Poland, 22%
      pt, Portugal, 21%
      sk, Slovak Republic, 19%
      si, Slovenia, 20%
      es, Spain, 16%
      se, Sweden, 25%
      uk, United Kingdom, 20%

    If any of these rates become incorrect, or if you wish to use different
    rates due to the nature of the product (e.g. books are 0% VAT in the
    UK), then you can (locally) set the rate by assigning to
    %Business::Tax::VAT::Price::RATE. e.g.:

      local $Business::Tax::VAT::Price::RATE{uk} = 0 
        if ($product_type eq 'book' and $country eq 'uk');

AUTHOR
    Tony Bowden

BUGS and QUERIES
    Please direct all correspondence regarding this module to:
    bug-Business-Tax-VAT@rt.cpan.org

COPYRIGHT
      Copyright (C) 2001-2014 Tony Bowden.

      This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
      the terms of the GNU General Public License; either version 2 of the License,
      or (at your option) any later version.

      This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
      ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
      FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

