Taxes

When you go to the Settings -> Taxes page of the Solidus admin interface, you can set up tax categories and tax rates that help you tax customers according to the taxation laws in your region(s).

Before you set up taxes in your store, you should set up zones , which are locations that your store manages regarding shipping and taxes.

Tax categories

Each of your products has a Tax Category field. This allows you to charge different tax rates for products, which you may need to do in order to comply with your regional laws.

For example, if you have a stock location in California, any clothing you ship within the state should be taxed. But any candy that you sell is tax exempt. You may want to create a "Candy" tax category to handle your candy products that are exempt from tax.

Tax category fields

When you create or edit a tax category, it uses the following settings:

• Name: The name for your tax category.
• Tax Code: An optional tax code that describes your tax category.
• Default: A checkbox that sets whether the current tax category should be used as the default tax category for new products.
• Description: An optional long description for your tax category.

Tax rates

You can create tax rates that should be used for orders from different states or countries , as well as for each of your tax categories. If your stores have more complicated tax requirements, your tax rates can perform more complex functions:

• You can create tax rates that calculate using sales tax (U.S.-style taxes) or value-added taxes ( VAT , or E.U.-style taxes). Sales tax is applied on top of the price of each item, where as VAT is included in the price of each item.
• You can show or hide tax rates in customer invoices.
• You can create tax rates that are valid from a specific date.
• You can change the Base Calculator to a custom tax calculator .

Create a tax rate

You can create a new tax rate in just a few steps:

1. Go to the Settings -> Taxes page of the Solidus admin interface.
2. Go to the Tax Rates page.
3. Select the New Tax Rate button.
4. Fill in the information for your new tax rate. See Tax rate fields for more information.
5. Select the Create button to save the new tax rate.

Tax rate fields

When you add or edit a tax rate, the following settings are available:

• Name: The name for the tax rate. By default, customers can see the name of the tax rate during checkout.
• Rate: The tax rate as a decimal. For example, 0.05 would become a 5% tax rate.
• Included in Price: Sets whether the tax should be calculated as already included in price of items ( value-added tax ) or should be calculated as sales tax on top of the price of items.
• Zone: The zone where this tax rate applies.
• Tax Category: The tax category that this tax rate should apply to.
• Validity Period: The start and end dates that this tax rate is valid to.
• Base Calculator: The tax calculator that should be used to calculate taxes. For more information, see Tax calculators below.

Tax calculators

By default, Solidus includes a single tax calculator called Default Tax. This calculator is suitable to calculate taxes for typical ecommerce transactions around the world.

If your business has complicated tax requirements, you may want to have your development team create a tax calculator that is suited specifically to your store.