On Orders, your Sales Tax will be calculated by your Default Sales Tax rate that is set in your Payment Settings. If you only ever have to charge one Sales Tax rate, you’ll set that once and never think about it again. The Sales Tax will be automatically calculated on the Order.
If, however, you have to collect different Sales Tax rates on different Orders, you’ll need to use Tax Items. Tax Items are like Inventory Items and Conceptual Items in that you create them in the Items section of your account.
When you create it, be sure to tick the “Item is tax” box in the lower right corner of your browser window.
Once you do that, RW Elephant will know that the Item is a tax. In RW Elephantland, that means:
- It is a percentage
- It will only calculate based on taxable Items (not nontaxable ones)
- Only one Tax Item will be allowed per Order so if you add a new one, the old one will be deleted
- The Item will show up in the correct place on your Order PDF
- Any money you collect via this Tax Item will be included in your Sales Tax Report
You can create as many Tax Items as you need. It may also be helpful to include the percentage in the name of the Tax Item itself (i.e., “Denver Sales Tax (9%)”) but that isn’t necessary.
If your Sales Tax rates ever changes, you can edit the “Rental Price” field of the Tax Item to include the new percentage. Once you do this, the new rate will be used for any Orders you add the Tax Item to from that point forward. Any existing Orders that have the Tax Item will not be modified unless you remove the Tax Item and then add it back.