[BUG] Double taxation on gifted Claude Max subscription – $45.05 overcharge, Fin confirmed but cannot resolve

[Hereetria]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Gifted Claude Max subscriptions are being double-taxed. The gifting party pays Turkish VAT at purchase ($60 on a $300 gift), and the recipient is charged VAT again when redeeming and upgrading — resulting in a $45.05 overcharge.

This appears to be a systemic billing bug, not an isolated incident. Related issues: #51168 (Gift Max 20X proration bug), #47290 (Gift subscription silently cancelled), #41499 (Gift Max 20X proration destroying credit), #48780 (Double billing).

Timeline:

• Gifting party purchases Claude Max gift → pays $360 ($300 + $60 TR VAT)
• I redeem gift, $100/mo plan activates → charged $120 ($20 extra VAT)
• I upgrade to $200/mo Max 20x → charged additional $25.05 tax on gifted balance
• April 24: Fin confirms the $45.05 double taxation error in writing
• April 24 – May 4: No human follow-up, no resolution

Evidence (available upon request — contains PII, not suitable for public disclosure):

• $200 subscription invoice showing VAT applied to gifted balance
• $100 subscription invoice showing $20 VAT overcharge
• Gifting party's payment receipt confirming VAT was already collected at purchase
• Fin's written confirmation (April 24, 2026) acknowledging the $45.05 double taxation error and admitting inability to escalate

I can provide all four documents via email to the billing team upon request.

Expected behavior: Gift redemption should recognize that VAT was already collected at purchase and not apply it again on the recipient's side.

Actual behavior: VAT is charged twice — once from the buyer and once from the recipient.

Request:

1. $45.05 refund to original payment method
2. Fix the gift billing pipeline to prevent double taxation
3. Human review of this case

What Should Happen?

Gift redemption should recognize that VAT was already collected at purchase and not apply it again on the recipient's side. The $45.05 overcharge should be refunded and the gift billing pipeline should be fixed to prevent double taxation.

Error Messages/Logs

No error messages — this is a billing system bug, not a code error.
Fin support chat transcript confirming the issue is available upon request.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Purchase a Claude Max gift subscription from a country with VAT (e.g. Turkey, 20%)
2. Recipient redeems the gift
3. Observe: recipient is charged VAT again on the subscription invoice
4. Upgrade the plan (e.g. Max 5x → Max 20x)
5. Observe: additional VAT charged on the upgrade invoice despite balance being from an already-taxed gift

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

latest

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Other Linux

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

No response

[github-actions]

Found 1 possible duplicate issue:

1. [BUG] Gift Pro 12 months: wrong redemption mechanism + double VAT charge for Germany #54680

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

• If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
• To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Hereetria]

Not a duplicate. #54680 is about Gift Pro 12-month redemption with double VAT in Germany. My issue (#55963) is about Gift Max subscription with double Turkish VAT — different country, different plan tier, different billing mechanism.
The only common thread is that Anthropic's gift billing pipeline charges VAT twice, which suggests a systemic bug across all gifted subscriptions regardless of region or plan type. If anything, these are two independent data points confirming the same root cause — closing one as a duplicate of the other loses signal, not reduces noise.
Additionally, this issue was incorrectly labeled invalid ("not related to Claude Code"). This is a billing bug reported through the only channel where Anthropic engineering actually responds — the claude-code issue tracker has become the de facto support escalation path because Fin cannot escalate and usersafety@anthropic.com has not responded in 10+ days.

[github-actions]

Closing for now — inactive for too long. Please open a new issue if this is still relevant.

[Erotemic]

I ran into the same problem in the US.

Here are the facts:

• I bought a one-month Claude Max 5x gift for $100.
• Anthropic charged me $7 in New York sales tax, so I paid $107.
• The recipient already had an active Max subscription.
• Anthropic turned the gift into a $100 account credit.
• Their next bill was $100 for Max 5x plus $6 in Maryland sales tax.
• Anthropic applied the $100 credit and charged their card the remaining $6.

So I paid tax when I bought the gift, and they paid tax again when they used it. Between us, Anthropic collected $113 for one $100 month of service.

Maybe there is some strange tax rule that isn't neither fair nor obvious. But on paper this doesn't add up. If the gift is just account credit, why was I taxed when I bought it? If it is a prepaid subscription, why were they taxed again when they used it?

I have the invoices and receipts for both charges and can provide them privately. The $6 itself is not a big deal. The problem is that this looks like the same billing issue reported here, and it is very hard to reach a real person who can explain or fix it.

The other issue is that this did NOT happen when I gifted the person their first month. So either the double tax is incorrectly not applied on the first charge, or the renewal incorrectly applies is on the second, or there is some legal rule that distinguishes the situtations (IMO) in an inelegant way (i.e. we could have chosen a different path from A to B where the person I gave it to bought it themselves and then were refunded and we would have not run into this, the intent of the purchase would be the same, so it feels wrong that its treated differently). Either way its unexpected, and if we zoom out and look at this from a fairness perspective, someone who receives a gift should not be forced to pay taxes that were already paid by the gifter.