Value-added Tax (VAT) (German Umsatzsteuer, USt)

Depending on the applicable laws of your country, some aspects of a conference you organize may be subject to sales tax/VAT. In many countries, educational events and vocational training events are exempt from VAT. Nonetheless, for instance in Germany, social events not directly related to the scientific program (e.g. a boat trip in the evening) are subject to VAT tax. That means you would need to collect sales tax on that part of the registration fee and then transfer it to the tax authorities. As the conference organizer, please determine whether any part of your event is subject to VAT. If you are unsure, please get advice, e.g. from your university conference office.

Note that often, however, the VAT you receive from the registrations will equal the VAT you pay your service providers, e.g. you charge people registering for your conference 30 euros + 19% tax for the boat trip, and then you buy boat trip tickets from the boat company for 30 euros + 19% tax. In that case, the VAT you receive and the VAT you pay will cancel each other out and you do not need to transfer any money to the tax authorities.

On the receipt sent by Conference Central to people who register for your conference, the standard registration fees will be displayed with zero VAT tax. If you wish, you can also specify an additional event which is subject to VAT and will be added to the registration fees. This will be itemized separately on the registration receipt that is sent by Conference Central to the people registering for your conference.

You can also specify whether the event is optional (i.e. people registering can choose whether to sign up for this event or not) or whether it gets added automatically to all registrations.

Please note: Conference Central will not transfer any collected VAT money to any tax office. As the conference organizer, you will receive the VAT tax together with the registration fees, and you are then responsible to pay the collected VAT to tax authorities in your country.

Here is how to customize your registration page:

1. When creating the registration page for your conference, you can specify different registration categories with different registration prices. For instance, in the screenshot below, only one option is activated - a registration category called 'Student' with a registration fee of 100 euro. There are 4 standard registration categories (student, postdoc, PI and industry) and three registration categories where you can select the name as you wish. All of these registration prices will be invoiced to the conference participants with no VAT, because most of the scientific program is usually VAT free.
   
2. In addition, you can specify an event that will be invoiced with VAT. For instance, in the screenshot below, the conference participants have the choice to sign up for an optional boat trip which costs 30 euro + 19% VAT = 35.70 euro.
   
3. On your conference dashboard, you will see how many people have registered for which category, and how much VAT has been collected on your behalf.