Tax-excluded or tax-included pricing on a landing page: what the law requires, what conversion prefers

"€590" or "€590 excl. tax": on paper, a three-letter difference. In practice, it's sometimes a legal obligation, sometimes a strategic choice, and almost always a source of confusion — especially when a single landing page serves both freelancers who invoice with VAT and individuals paying out of pocket. The good news: part of the choice isn't really a choice, the law decides for you depending on who you're selling to. The other part is where conversion is actually at stake.

What the law requires (and where it leaves room to choose)

In France, article L112-1 of the Consumer Code is explicit: when facing a consumer — an individual buying for personal use — the price displayed must be the tax-included price, the amount actually charged at checkout. Showing a tax-excluded price to an individual, even in small print under a tax-included one, isn't a design option: it's an infringement. When facing a business buyer (B2B), the reverse convention applies: the tax-excluded price serves as the reference, provided the applicable VAT rate or amount is stated nearby. A landing page selling a consumer course, a subscription aimed at individuals, or an e-commerce product therefore has no choice: it's tax-included, full stop. A landing page selling B2B software, a consulting service, or a tool for freelancers can show the tax-excluded price — it's even the dominant convention in that world — but must stay transparent about what's still owed.

Why the tax-excluded number always feels lighter: the tax you don't see

The instinct to show a tax-excluded price whenever the law allows it isn't just an accounting habit: a price with no visible tax genuinely feels cheaper, even when the buyer knows perfectly well a tax will be added. This is the subject of a landmark study in behavioral economics, Chetty, Looney, and Kroft (2009), "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence", published in the American Economic Review. In a field experiment run in a grocery store, the researchers compared aisles where the shelf tag included the sales tax to aisles where it only appeared at the register: making the tax visible on the tag cut demand by 8% — even though the amount actually paid hadn't changed by a cent. The authors' conclusion goes beyond a retail curiosity: consumers systematically under-react to a cost that isn't "salient", meaning immediately visible in the number they're looking at. For a B2B landing page, that means a genuinely real tax-excluded price — €490 rather than €588 with tax — isn't a manipulation, but it does exploit a documented cognitive bias: your visitor remembers the small number, not the true amount that will leave their account.

The flip side: the surprise at checkout

The same mechanism that makes a tax-excluded price appealing at the top of the page can turn against you further down the funnel. If your headline price excludes tax and the tax-included figure only appears at checkout, the gap between the number your visitor remembered and the number they now owe produces exactly the jolt that drives someone away at the last step — the same trust break as a form that changes its rules mid-flow. The fix isn't to abandon tax-excluded pricing in B2B — the sector convention justifies it — but to never let it stand alone: a prominent tax-excluded price with the tax-included one just below, in smaller type ("€490 excl. tax, i.e. €588 incl. tax"), keeps the anchoring effect without creating a bad surprise when the card comes out.

The special case of freelancers and micro-entrepreneurs

Many B2B buyers of a coaching, consulting, or pro-tool landing page are themselves freelancers — often VAT-exempt under a micro-enterprise scheme, meaning they can't reclaim any VAT and effectively pay the displayed tax-excluded amount as if it were tax-included. For that specific audience, showing a tax-excluded price without its tax-included equivalent doesn't mislead anyone about the real amount — but it still deserves full clarity on the VAT mention (or its absence), to avoid any ambiguity once the invoice is issued. Conversely, a VAT-registered company reclaims the tax and naturally compares offers ex-VAT: for them, the tax-excluded price is the right decision unit. A landing page addressing both profiles gains from showing both figures side by side rather than betting on the one that will resonate with the majority.

Display best practices

1. The tax status is always visible — "excl. tax" or "incl. tax" sits right next to the price, never tucked into a footnote discovered later.
2. The second figure is never far away — if the headline price excludes tax, the tax-included amount appears just below it, in smaller type; the anchor stays effective without hiding the real amount.
3. No gap between the landing page and checkout — the price shown on your sales page must be strictly the one Stripe (or your payment tool) shows at the next step; any divergence, even one justified by tax rules, reads as a deceptive practice.
4. A note on VAT exemption — if you invoice under a VAT-exemption scheme, a mention such as "VAT not applicable, exempt regime" next to the price removes any question or legal ambiguity.
5. One rule per audience — if your offer serves both individuals and businesses, two separate landing pages, each with the display convention that fits its audience, beat a single page that switches between tax-excluded and tax-included mid-paragraph.

A choice that also shapes the page's credibility

A tax-excluded price shown with no tax-included mention, on an offer clearly aimed at the general public, is one of the fastest signals that makes a savvy visitor doubt a site's reliability — on par with a missing legal notice. Conversely, clarity on this point builds the same trust capital as anchoring with an honest reference price or a genuinely charged strikethrough price: it's never the tax detail itself that converts, it's the total absence of friction between what the visitor reads and what they'll actually pay. LanderKit templates are shown at €89, tax included — sold to freelancers and teams alike, clarity beats any short-term perception trick, even on B2B-leaning pages like saas-waitlist or coach-consultant.