In Russia, VAT has been introduced since 1992. This is an indirect tax that is included in the cost of goods and is subject to transfer to the budget. Buyers face VAT everywhere.
The essence of VAT
Calculating the amount of VAT is an important aspect of accounting. The default VAT tax rate is 18%, certain categories of goods are taxed at rates of 10% (medical goods or goods for children) or 0% (goods for export). VAT is also levied on imported goods.
The cost of almost any product is made up of its price and the amount of VAT. Organizations and individual entrepreneurs that sell goods or provide services are required to transfer the amount of VAT to the budget. Despite the fact that VAT is paid to the budget by companies, in fact, consumers themselves pay it out of their own pockets. It turns out that when buying a product, buyers pay 118% of its value (or 100% + VAT rate).
All companies and individual entrepreneurs are VAT payers, except for those that use special regimes (STS or UTII).
How to calculate the cost of goods excluding VAT
In most cases, the value of goods on store shelves is already indicated with VAT. Of course, there are other situations when the seller quotes the price without VAT, and at the checkout the buyer needs to pay an additional 18% of the purchase price. This is primarily done for marketing purposes, since it seems to buyers that such products are cheaper, and in the end they spend more money.
It is extremely simple to calculate the cost of goods excluding VAT. It is necessary to divide the total cost of goods with VAT by 1, 18 (118%). For example, the cost of a product with VAT is 15,000. Accordingly, its price without VAT will be 12711.86 rubles.
It should be noted that this calculation does not quite accurately reflect the actual value of the goods, since the buyer can only see the final cost. This is due to the fact that the goods are manufactured in parts, from various components, on which each manufacturer also charges its own VAT. Therefore, the final price of the goods already includes a number of VAT. In this regard, it is quite problematic to calculate the cost of goods excluding VAT.
Automated VAT calculation
Despite the fact that the calculation of VAT seems to be extremely simple, for those who, for whatever reason, do not want to carry out the calculation on their own, this process can be automated. To do this, you can easily find specialized calculators on the Internet, into which it is enough to enter the initial data (cost of goods with VAT) and they will instantly provide a ready-made answer - the price of goods without VAT.
Accountants in organizations rarely calculate VAT on their own, for them it is automatically done by the accounting program. For example, "1C: Accounting" or "1C: Enterprise". To do this, the accountant only needs to enter the tax rate, and the program will do the rest by itself. But these specialized programs are paid, they have a wide functionality and it is not advisable to purchase them only for calculating VAT.
