Can I use Quickbooks Ireland for a company operating in a different EU country?

Hi there, nyc-corp. I appreciate you reaching out to us here in the Community. Allow me to provide additional information about using an Irish QBO version and opening in another EU country.

Yes, you can use the Irish version of QuickBooks Online for a company operating in another EU country, as long as you're aware of certain limitations. The reason why the warnings keep on prompting is that you've registered your account in Ireland. Once you've set the region, the system locks your business location to Ireland.

To avoid the warning popping up, I suggest having another subscription that is from an EU country.

For additional assistance about the subscription warning prompt, you may contact our support team.

Here's how:

1. Log in to your QBO account, then click the Help button (?).
2. Click the Search tab, then enter Contact us.
3. Click Contact Us at the bottom of the page, then select either Call back or Chat to speak with a representative.

If you need additional assistance related to QuickBooks, don't hesitate to reply here. We're here to help.

Thank you for your message, @RhoiceW!

I would love to use the general EU version of QBO but my company needs accurate VAT reverse charge accounting.

Only QBO Ireland and UK have reverse charge set up correctly with matching positive and negative tax, see sample Ireland screenshot below:

The standard EU version of QBO supports VAT but not the double accounting, which seems to be a tax group internally consisting of a positive and a separate negative rate. Unfortunately, if you try to recreate this, it doesn't work because most QBO reports only consider positive tax amounts, meaning that you end up with 38% instead of 0% in most places, if the applicable tax rate is 19%.

@RhoiceW, it would be great if you could share the following suggestion with the QBO EU product team: In my opinion, it should be possible to implement a generalized feature to account for EU VAT reverse charge, because VAT works the exact same way across all EU member states. You won't be able to generate VAT reports for each member state because the devil is in the detail, e.g. VAT3 for Ireland. However, you don't need to do that. Just create a generalized VAT report containing the below numbers:

• Net amount of services sold to companies in other EU member states
  • VAT amount on the above by rate
  • Negative VAT amount on the above by rate
• Net amount of goods sold to companies in other EU member states
  • VAT amount on the above by rate
  • Negative VAT amount on the above by rate
• Net amount of services purchased from companies in other EU member states
  • VAT amount on the above by rate
  • Negative VAT amount on the above by rate
• Net amount of goods purchased from companies in other EU member states
  • VAT amount on the above by rate
  • Negative VAT amount on the above by rate

This will provide business owners, accountants, and tax advisors with all the numbers they need to fill out the respective VAT forms (there are country-specific reporting differences, for example, in Ireland, EU exports don't increase VAT Receivable and Payable, while in Germany, VAT Receivable and Payable increase by the same amount). In my opinion, there is very little that the QBO engineers would have to do: Simply allow customers to set up their own VAT rates (already possible) and, additionally, allow them to mark certain VAT rates as cross-border rates so that the double accounting is applied correctly.

I don't understand why QBO makes it so hard for businesses in Europe to use their software. We have been a happy QBO customer for many years in the US and would love to use it for Europe as well. However, we won't use two different solutions.

@RhoiceW, this is what the generalized VAT report should look like:

•  Net amount of services sold to companies in other EU member states by rate
  • VAT amount on the above
  • Negative VAT amount on the above
• Net amount of goods sold to companies in other EU member states by rate
  • VAT amount on the above
  • Negative VAT amount on the above
• Net amount of services purchased from companies in other EU member states by rate
  • VAT amount on the above
  • Negative VAT amount on the above
• Net amount of goods purchased from companies in other EU member states by rate
  • VAT amount on the above
  • Negative VAT amount on the above

Sometimes, it is necessary to report different rate amounts separately.

Hello there, nyc-corp.

I truly understand the challenges you're experiencing in finding a QBO version that fully supports your company's VAT requirements while working across multiple EU countries. It’s clear that you’ve put a lot of time and thought into analyzing how VAT works across EU member states and how QuickBooks could better serve businesses like yours.

Accurate VAT reverse charge accounting is essential for compliance and efficient operations, and I appreciate how thoughtful and detailed your suggestion is for improving the product.

I recommend sharing your feedback with our product development team as they work on enhancing features in QBO. Here’s how you can submit it:

1. Go to the Gear icon and select Feedback.
2. Enter a brief description of your product suggestion.
3. Click Next to submit it

This process ensures your suggestions are received and consider to prioritize future updates.

If you have any other questions about QuickBooks, feel free to reply on this thread.

Thank you for your message, @ElykaJen_A, I will use the feedback feature as suggested and link to this thread because it seems to support more formatting options that can be quite helpful, I think. That's also why I'm adding a bit more context below on what exactly doesn't work in the EU version but does work in the Ireland and UK versions:

As I already mentioned above, I assume that a tax group is used in the Ireland and UK versions of QBO to account for reverse charge VAT. I tried to recreate this by setting up two individual VAT rates, one of 19% and another of -19%. I would then create a new group tax rate consisting of these two individual rates and use it as the tax rate of an invoice, for example. That works great, as you can see below:

However, internally, QBO seems to be working with positive tax amounts only, see for example here:

Similarly, the VAT reports are also only using positive amounts. In the example below, I tried to adjust the report by having it subtract the negative amount under "adjustments". However, QBO just adds everything up, ending in 38% tax instead of 0%, see below: