Maropost for Commerce's basic Essentials package includes automatic sales tax calculation. However, you are responsible to know what are the tax rates and jurisdictions that are applicable to your business.
You will configure your sales tax regions within the Admin Setup section of Maropost for Commerce. To access this section, mouse over your user name in the right corner of the menu bar, then select Settings from the Settings menu.
📋Note: If you have an account with Avalara, you can integrate your Avalara account with Maropost for Commerce. In this case, you are not required to manually configure the sales tax setup. See Integrate with Avalara for more information.
Select Taxes from the left hand nav bar to view the Sales Tax index page. Then, click the [+Tax Rate] button.
Create/Edit Sales Tax Region
- Destination -- select the country of this particular tax rate.
- Apply Tax on Shipping -- check this box whether you want shipping charges are to be added to the total cart value (less discounts) when calculating sales tax. This will vary from country to country.
- Country Tax Rate -- enter the tax rate for the country of the tax jurisdiction. If there is no national tax, enter '0'.
- States/Provinces -- enter the names of the states/provinces that you will be charging sales tax.
- State Tax Rate -- enter the tax rate for each of the states (provinces).
- Tax Name -- type in the name of the tax rate; i.e., 'VAT', 'HST', 'GST', 'PST', etc.
- Tax Application
- Added to Federal Tax -- the state tax rate is first added to the federal tax rate. Then the sum of the tax rates is applied to the sales order.
Example: federal tax is 10% and state tax is 2%. The combined tax assessed to a cart value of $100 will be 12% of $100, or $12. - Instead of Federal Tax -- the state tax rate takes precedence over the country tax rate for this particular state.
- Compounded on top of Federal Tax -- the country tax is calculated first and added to the cart value. Then, state tax is calculated on that total amount.
Example: federal tax is 10% and state tax is 2%. Federal tax assessed to a cart value of $100 will be $10. State tax will be assessed to the combined amount of $110, or $2.20.
- Added to Federal Tax -- the state tax rate is first added to the federal tax rate. Then the sum of the tax rates is applied to the sales order.
Local Taxes (US Only)
Use this option if you have nexus in local areas that charge additional or different tax rates from that of the entire state. You can add as many local tax rates as you want.
- Add Local Tax -- click the [+] icon on the right side of the state tax row to add local taxes on top of the state sales tax.
- Local Tax Rate -- enter the local tax rate
- Zip Codes -- enter the zip codes of this local tax juristiction
- Tax Application -- select whether the local tax will be applied added to state and federal tax rate, used instead of, or compounded on top of.
Tax Overrides
Use this option if you want to apply a different tax rate in a particular state to a particular category of products. For example, in some states in the US, certain types of food items are tax exempt while most other tangible products are not.
You can add as many overrides as you need for each state and each product category.
- Tax Jurisdiction -- Start typing the name of the state (or province) you want to apply the override to.
- Product Category -- select the Product Category this override applies to.
- Tax Rate -- enter the overriding tax rate
