Issue with VAT not charged for particular country

-- HikaShop version -- : 2.4.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.4.3

We have a strange situation where VAT has not been charged on an order for a particular country.

We have two tax categories set up in Hikashop:

Default Tax Category with restriction as Zone: United Kingdom.

Overseas with restriction as Zone: Overseas

Both of these tax categories are set to charge VAT at the same rate

We have had a customer buy some items from the store with an Overseas address. The country of the address used (Sweden) is a sub-zone of the Overseas zone so they should have been charged VAT at the Overseas tax category rate, but they were not charged VAT at all.

I have tested this as a test customer for which I have added 3 addresses. One for the UK, one for Sweden and one for Australia.

If I select the UK or Australia address, Hikashop shows VAT is added at the checkout, but if I select Sweden as the address, no VAT is added at the checkout.

So the issue of VAT not being charged is with the address, but as Sweden is included as a sub-zone of the Overseas zone which is the zone used for the Overseas tax category, I don't understand why.

Please can you advise asap as we want to avoid this situation arising again.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks Nicolas for your guidance on this.

I have now unpublished the overseas tax category so the only one live is "Default tax category", but it makes no difference to the checkout result. If the address in the UK or Australia is selected for the customer at checkout then VAT is included, but if the address in Sweden is selected then no VAT is included. So it appears to be associated with the Address country and not the products.

What am I misunderstanding or is there an issue?

Thanks again...

An update to my response above. I have now seen in the Default tax category that was set with a Restriction value of "United Kingdom". Removing that has meant that the address in Sweden is now showing as including VAT - which is good.

But... that doesn't explain to me why the Address in Australia was already showing as including VAT before I removed the restriction.

What would have caused that?

Additionally, although I have now unpublished the Overseas tax category it is still showing in the dropdown selection options for existing products AND if I create a new product, the pre-selected Product tax category dropdown has Overseas as the selection. What is going on with that?

Thank you Nicolas. I think the confusion has come because the "overseas" option was set in both Configuration > System > Taxes showing in the Product tax category column and under the Manage tax categories button in the same area.

I had assumed that they were different but testing this, if setting a new tax category under the Manage tax categories button, that doesn't show in the main Tax rules screen in the Product tax category column.

I am still not sure I understand the difference in these, but deleting the extra rule under the Manage tax categories button also removes it as an option when creating a new product.

Thanks for your help.