Depending on where your store is located, you may be required to collect sales tax. AbleCommerce enables you to configure taxes for specific areas (Washington State Sales Tax) and specific products (Tobacco Tax).
Before configuring taxes, we suggest that you contact your tax attorney or accountant for help in figuring out the tax laws for your area.
The optional CERTITAX Service integrates seamlessly and transparently with AbleCommerce to accurately calculate sales taxes and verify shipping and/or billing addresses. Sales taxes are calculated for all applicable jurisdictions...and the maintenance of tax laws, rates, jurisdiction boundaries, and tax exemptions are done for you automatically! Billing and shipping addresses are validated, corrected as necessary, and zip+4 is added to help ensure smooth billing and fulfillment.
When you click Taxes from the left navigation menu you will be taken to a page shown below.
From the page above, you can add taxes as well as edit or delete any existing taxes. When you click Add to create a new tax, you will be shown a page similar to the one depicted below.
Enter the name of the tax here. For example, "Washington State Sales Tax", "Illinois Prescription Drug Tax". The name that you enter here will appear on the checkout page so the customer will know what tax is being collected.
Select whether the tax will be applied to the billing or the shipping address. This is an important distinction for instances where the billing address is in a different location than the shipping address. In the example figure above, the tax will only be applied to those who purchase a taxable food product and want the merchandise shipped to an address in South Carolina.
The selection that you make here will determine whether the tax rate will be multiplied to the cost of the taxable products only, the cost of shipping only, or taxable products and the shipping.
Every time that you add a new product into your store's inventory, you will need to select whether that product is taxable or not. If it isn't taxable, then tax will not be applied to the product no matter what criteria it falls under. If the product is taxable, then any applicable taxes will be applied to it.
The state or province that you select here will have the tax rate applied. If the entire country will be taxed, select Entire Country.
If you selected None at "Set As Store Level Tax On" you will now need to set up the products that will be taxed this particular tax. Select the tax name that was just created and click Edit. You will be shown the same tax page as the one above with an added section at the bottom of the page depicted below.
This will take you to the page where you select from all the products currently in your store that will be taxed.
Products need to be selected one at a time. Select the product from the drop-down box and click Finish. When you click Finish, you will be shown a page similar to the one below. Repeat the same steps if you have multiple products that need to be added to this tax.
You will see that the product named Example Food Product has been added to Product Level Taxes. Customers who purchase the Example Food Product and are having it shipped to an address located in South Carolina will be taxed 4% of the product's cost.
To add additional food products, click Add Link. If you need to remove a product so that it is no longer taxed, select the Delete check box located to the left of the product name and click Finish.
