When a tax rate looks off, the cause is almost always one of a handful of settings: where you have Sales Tax Presence, which address the order is taxed at, a custom rate or override, or an order that is already Shipped. Start with the breakdown on the order page, then work through the checks below before reporting a discrepancy to your Customer Success contact.
Applies to: employees who can see orders. Changing the settings mentioned needs Manage Financial Settings (presence, company rates), access to Settings > Operations > Shipping (the Ship From / Will Call address) or Manually Edit Orders (overrides). How the rate is worked out in the first place: Sales tax: where you collect it and how Allmoxy works out the rate.
In this article
- See how the tax was worked out
- Checks for a wrong or missing rate
- The rate looks like my shop's local rate
- No tax on an order that should have it
- Shipping taxed, or not, unexpectedly
- Checks for Canadian shops
- Things to know
See how the tax was worked out
You can view the tax breakdown on the order page. Click the small info icon next to Total in the order totals to open Tax Detail, which shows exactly how the tax is being calculated and which jurisdictions are used: the state, county, city and special-district rates behind the combined rate, and whether shipping was taxable at that address. Hover over the tax amount for where the rate came from: the shipping address, the company's custom rate, or an override and who entered it. If the order has an override or the company has a custom rate, there is no breakdown, because no lookup was used.
To review sales tax on many orders at once, use Reports > Financial > Sales Tax (tick at least one tax code in the filters): Financial reports: what each one shows.
Checks for a wrong or missing rate
If the tax calculated on a particular order looks wrong, check these before reporting it:
- Your Ship From / Will Call address on Settings > Operations > Shipping is correct and complete, with a state and postal code. Will call orders and orders on shipping methods without their own ship-from address are taxed at this address.
- Sales Tax Presence on Settings > Admin > Financial has every state or region you collect in selected. An order going to a state that isn't ticked gets no tax at all. If the list is empty, employees see a yellow warning on the order page and nothing is taxed; re-enter the states.
- The customer doesn't have a custom tax rate in the Financial Settings section of their company. If they do, it replaces the looked-up rate on every order they place, regardless of where it ships to or from, and 0 means exempt: Tax-exempt customers and custom tax rates.
- The order doesn't have an override. An override typed by an employee wins over everything, including the custom rate; the rate next to the tax line shows it with a remove icon.
- The shipping address on the order is valid, with the right state and postal code. A missing or wrong state means no lookup.
- The order isn't Shipped. A Shipped order's tax is frozen; address or settings changes after that don't touch it. Move it back from Shipped and save to look the rate up again.
- The products aren't exempt. A product marked Exempt from sales tax, or an itemized or project line with Tax Exempt ticked, is left out of the taxable amount, so the tax can be lower than rate times subtotal.
The rate looks like my shop's local rate
That is expected for will call: pickup orders are taxed at your shop's address. It also happens on a shipping method that has no ship-from address of its own, because the shop's Ship From / Will Call address is used for both ends. Give the method its own ship-from address on the Shipping settings page and the destination's rate is used instead. A method set to "act as will call" is taxed at that method's ship-from address on purpose.
No tax on an order that should have it
If the destination is in your presence list, the company has no custom rate of 0, the products aren't exempt and the order isn't Shipped, the tax-rate service may have been unavailable when the order was saved. A save that can't reach the service stores no tax and shows no message. Open the order, change the shipping method or address and change it back: the page previews the rate, and shows an error banner if the service is still unavailable. Save the order again and the rate is looked up; if it keeps failing, report it with the order number.
Shipping taxed, or not, unexpectedly
Whether shipping is taxed is decided by the tax-rate service for the address, not by a shop setting; the breakdown says whether freight was taxable. A custom shipping method with its own ship-from address can force tax on shipping with its Apply Tax box. If the tax line and a separate Shipping Tax line add up to a cent more or less than you expect, that is the display split (Show Sales Tax on Shipping Fees), not the amount charged.
Checks for Canadian shops
- Make sure that in your Financial settings you have the provinces of all the customers you sell to selected under Sales Tax Presence, not just the ones you sell from.
- Enter postal codes with the space between the two parts (T5T 3Y4 rather than T5T3Y4).
- Enter your Ship From / Will Call postal code on the Shipping settings page in that same format, so the lookup knows where the order is coming from.
- A Canadian order that shows GST only is a company with Canada PST Exempt ticked.
- Rates on the order page but not on the invoice output: add the GST and PST tags to the output page, see Canadian shops: GST, PST and HST.
Things to know
- Custom rate beats lookup, override beats custom rate, Shipped beats everything. Check them in that order.
- No message on a failed lookup. A $0 tax on a presence-state order is the clue; re-save the order.
- Last month's rate can linger. A looked-up rate is kept for an address until the start of the next month.
- The preview and the saved figure can differ by a fraction of a cent. The saved figure is the one on the invoice.
- Still not sure? Chat with us from the Support Center with the order number and we'll make sure it's working: Get help from Allmoxy.