Activating universal pricing in WooCommerce

When you enter product prices in WooCommerce including tax, the price customers see can change based on their location. This happens because WooCommerce, by default, removes your store's base tax and then adds the tax rate for the customer's specific country.

For example, if your product costs $10.00 (including your store's 20% tax), a customer from a 0% tax country might see a price of $8.33. Conversely, a customer from a 10% tax country would see a price of $9.16. This price fluctuation can be confusing for some customers and complicated for your business.

The Solution: Universal Pricing

Universal pricing is a strategy where all customers pay the same price for a product, regardless of their location or local tax rates. The displayed price remains constant, and your business absorbs any difference in the tax amount. This simplifies your pricing strategy and provides a more predictable customer experience.

How to Activate Universal Pricing

To enable this feature, you need to add a simple code snippet to your store. This code will tell WooCommerce to keep the final price consistent for every customer.

Follow these steps to activate universal pricing:

1. Access your site's files. You can do this by using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client or through a hosting file manager.
2. Navigate to your theme. The file you need to edit is located at wp-content/themes/[your-theme-name]/functions.php .
3. Open functions.php  for editing.
4. Copy and paste the following code at the end of the file:

/**
 * Set the 'woocommerce_adjust_non_base_location_prices' filter to false.
 *
 * This function ensures that product prices remain the same for all customers,
 * regardless of their location. WooCommerce will not remove the store's base
 * taxes from the product price when a customer is from a different country.
 * Instead, the displayed price (including tax) remains constant, and the
 * tax calculation adjusts to account for the difference.
 *
 */
add_filter( 'woocommerce_adjust_non_base_location_prices', '__return_false' );

Important Considerations

• Experimental Nature: As noted in some documentation, this feature was considered "experimental" at its introduction (since WooCommerce 2.4.7 ) and its behavior might have subtle nuances or changes in later versions. Always test thoroughly.
• Price Display Settings: This filter primarily impacts how prices are calculated when your WooCommerce store is configured to display prices inclusive of tax. If you display prices exclusive of tax, its effect might be different or less noticeable.
• Impact on Reports: While it can simplify frontend pricing, ensure you understand how this affects your backend tax reports and your actual tax obligations. You're still liable for the correct tax, even if you absorb the difference.