I'm trying to purchase an item in the USA. I live in Thailand (and my PayPal account is registered in Thailand).
But I see that there is an additional amount charged for VAT on top of the sales price.
Surely, I'm not required to pay Sales Tax if I do not live in the USA?
(Similarly for any items or services purchased in the EU or UK...)
So, just because the merchant or seller is registered for VAT / Sales Tax, that doesn't mean we as customers are required to pay the VAT portion if we are not residing in the same tax jurisdiction, right? Unless, perhaps, the seller is also registered for VAT in the country I live as well, in which case, does PayPal calculate the VAT to pay for the region I'm in and then pay that to the merchant who then subsequently makes a VAT return to the various different countries in which they are registered?
If I am not required to pay VAT then how do I tell the system to remove the VAT portion of the payment?
Possibly it's a bug in the PayPal script that doesn't detect that the customer isn't required to pay the VAT / Sales Tax and simply calculates the VAT for wherever the merchant is registered. I presume that the merchant has to enter their VAT registration number (and state/country/jurisdiction) in order for PayPal to even know how to calculate the VAT - because it varies from state to state, country to country and even item to item.
