Tax
Set the rates your shop charges, decide whether your shelf prices already include them, and put every product in the right band.
Everything below — especially the country presets — is a starting suggestion, not tax advice. The product says so itself: "Suggested rates only — starting points to confirm with your tax authority or accountant before you sell. They are not tax advice, may be out of date, and never include local (city/county/district) taxes." Confirm every number before you charge a customer with it.
Rates and classes
Two pieces, and the difference is the whole model:
- A tax rate is one component — "VAT 20%", "GST", "PST", "TX state sales tax". Rates belong to a store.
- A tax class is a band you put products in — standard, exempt, zero_rated. A class decides which rate or rates apply at checkout. Classes belong to the company.
Settings → Tax says it in one line: "Create one or more components for this store (sales tax, VAT, GST/PST/HST), then assign each product's tax class in Catalog. A tax class determines which component or components apply at checkout."
Add a rate by hand
- Open Settings → Tax.
- Under Create your own rate, enter a Name — "e.g. GST, PST, HST". This is what prints on the receipt, so name it the way your customers and your accountant expect.
- Enter the Rate %.
- Tick Tax inclusive if your shelf prices already contain this tax.
- Tick Compound (tax-on-tax) only if this tax is charged on top of another tax.
- Leave Active ticked and press Add rate.
Each rate is listed with its percentage and its flags — Inclusive or Exclusive, Compound, Active or Inactive — with Edit and Deactivate buttons.
Completed sales keep the tax they were rung up with. When a rate changes, Deactivate the old one and add the new one rather than editing in place if you want the change to be visible in your records.
Putting a product in a band
On the product form, Tax class lists each class with its rate and whether it is inclusive — for example "standard — 20.00% incl.". If the list is empty the form tells you: "No store tax classes yet — add rates in Settings."
A product left on None is not taxed. Check that before assuming a zero on a receipt is a bug.
Inclusive or exclusive pricing
This is a real operational difference, not a preference:
| Inclusive | Exclusive | |
|---|---|---|
| Shelf price | Already contains the tax. £12.00 means the customer pays £12.00. | Tax is added at the till. $12.00 becomes $12.99 at the counter. |
| Typical of | UK, Ireland, EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Pakistan, India, the Gulf, South Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico | United States, Canada |
| Receipt shows | The total, with the tax it contains broken out below | Subtotal, then tax, then total |
Set it per rate with the Tax inclusive tick. Several countries legally require inclusive display to consumers — the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Germany and South Africa among them — so if you are in one of those, tick it.
Country tax presets
Rather than making a shopkeeper look up the VAT rate, tech-pos carries a catalogue of suggested rates for twenty countries:
| Country | System | Suggested bands | Prices shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pakistan | Sales Tax (GST) | 18%, zero-rated 0% | Inclusive |
| India | GST | 0%, 5%, 18%, 40% (demerit) | Inclusive |
| United Kingdom | VAT | 20%, 5% reduced, 0% | Inclusive |
| Ireland | VAT | 23%, 13.5%, 9%, 0% | Inclusive |
| United Arab Emirates | VAT | 5%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Saudi Arabia | VAT | 15%, 0% | Inclusive |
| United States | Sales tax | The state rate, by state | Exclusive |
| Canada | GST / HST / PST | By province | Exclusive |
| Australia | GST | 10%, GST-free 0% | Inclusive |
| New Zealand | GST | 15%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Singapore | GST | 9%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Malaysia | SST | Sales 10%, sales 5%, service 8%, exempt 0% | Inclusive |
| South Africa | VAT | 15%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Germany | VAT (Umsatzsteuer) | 19%, 7%, 0% | Inclusive |
| France | VAT (TVA) | 20%, 10%, 5.5%, 2.1%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Spain | VAT (IVA) | 21%, 10%, 4%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Italy | VAT (IVA) | 22%, 10%, 5%, 4%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Netherlands | VAT (BTW) | 21%, 9%, 0% | Inclusive |
| Mexico | VAT (IVA) | 16%, 8% border zone, 0% | Inclusive |
| Japan | Consumption tax | 10%, 8% reduced | Inclusive |
The three rules a preset obeys
- It is a suggestion, never an instruction. Each preset carries the date the rates were believed correct, the authority to confirm them with, and any local complication — Pakistan's provincial service taxes, India's restructured slabs, Malaysia's split between sales and service tax, Mexico's border-zone rate.
- It is additive. Applying a preset adds the rates that are missing and creates the standard, exempt and zero-rated classes. It never deactivates anything and never removes a rate you added.
- It never overwrites a rate you have edited. If a rate with that name already exists on the store, the preset leaves it exactly as you have it — percentage, inclusive flag, active or not. Applying the same preset twice therefore changes nothing the second time.
Only the standard band is wired up automatically. Reduced, zero and service bands are created as rates but stay unassigned, because which products belong in them is a decision only the shopkeeper can make.
The United States gives you the state rate only
American sales tax is not a national rate. City, county and special-district taxes ride on top of the state rate and differ street by street, so the preset carries the state base rate only and says so:
"State base rate only. City, county and special-district sales taxes ride on top of this in most states and are not included — confirm the combined rate for this store address with the state department of revenue."
All fifty states plus the District of Columbia are covered. The five with no state sales tax — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon — come through as a 0% rate with a note that local taxes may still apply. No city rate is ever invented for you; add the local component as a second rate yourself.
Countries left out on purpose
Some tax systems do not reduce to a handful of headline rates, and a wrong rate is a real liability for a merchant. Brazil, Nigeria, China, Egypt and Russia are deliberately absent rather than guessed at. Asking for a country with no preset gives you a straight answer: "No tax preset for country 'XX'. Add the store's tax rates manually — we would rather have no suggestion than a wrong one."
Applying a preset today
Settings → Tax offers a country preset dropdown, but the only choice in it is Canada, and the Apply region button always applies Canada. The other nineteen countries exist in the platform and are reachable through the API, but there is no screen that applies them. For every country except Canada, add your rates by hand with Create your own rate — the table above tells you what to type.
Canada, province by province
- Open Settings → Tax. A Canada province preset box appears when the store's country is Canada — "Creates GST/PST or HST components and wires product tax classes."
- Choose the Province: BC (GST 5% + PST 7%), ON (HST 13%), AB (GST 5%), SK, MB, QC (GST + QST), NS, NB, NL, PE.
- Press Apply region.
You get back the list of components it created and a reminder to assign product tax classes (standard / gst_only / exempt). Applying it to a store that is not currently Canadian changes the store's country to Canada, which the box warns about first.
Restaurant and multi-store notes
- Rates are per store. Two branches in different states or provinces each get their own rates, and neither affects the other.
- Tax classes are per company, so the band a product sits in follows it everywhere — which is what you want, because "food" is food in every branch even when the percentage differs.
- Where more than one component applies, the receipt breaks out each rate by name; with a single rate it prints one Tax line.