VAT for payments from abroad

VAT 0% may apply to sales to foreign residents.

According to the law, a foreign resident is defined as an individual who permanently resides outside of Israel or a legal entity registered abroad.

When processing a payment, there is no reliable technical way to determine whether the payer is a foreign resident. Geolocation is unreliable, as an Israeli resident may be abroad at the time of payment.

Since the business is in direct contact with the customer to whom it sells goods or services and reports to the tax authorities, the business is responsible for correctly issuing the tax invoice.

Automatic application of VAT 0%

A relatively reliable approach is to rely on the country in which the customer's card was issued (with the understanding that this method also has exceptions).

By default, Allpay includes a built-in feature that generates receipts with 0% VAT for payments made with foreign cards.

For technical reasons, the system can determine whether a payment was made with a foreign card only after the payment is actually completed. Therefore, if 18% VAT is set in the payment link settings, the system will automatically apply 0% instead of 18% after the payment is completed.

Since the tax receipt (hashbonit mas/kabala) is generated after the payment is completed, the receipt will show 0% VAT, and the service price will be equal to the final payment amount.

Example:

Payment with Israeli card:

Service — 100 NIS

VAT — 17 NIS

Total — 117 NIS

Payment with foreign card:‍

Service — 117 NIS

VAT — 0 NIS

Total — 117 NIS

We recommend in payment link settings set <span class="u-richtext-element">VAT mode</span> → <span class="u-richtext-element">included in price</span> and display prices with VAT already included. This will appear more natural to international customers.

Applying VAT for foreign cards

If a business does not want to rely on determining foreign residency based on the card’s country, it is necessary to activate the checkbox <span class="u-richtext-element">Charge VAT on foreign cards</span> in <span class="u-richtext-element">Settings</span> → <span class="u-richtext-element">Company</span>. This will apply VAT to foreign cards the same way as to Israeli cards.