Taxes

A functional store must include data on taxes. Taxation involves charging and collecting taxes on the goods and services sold through the store. The combination of tax categories, calculation codes, jurisdiction, and jurisdiction groups create the tax charges for the store.

The Site Administrator and Seller can set the taxes for any business model. For the consumer direct business model, the Operations Manager can also set the taxes.

You specify tax settings for your store using the Tax notebook. Using this notebook you can set up or change tax information so that taxes are displayed on each order. Before you specify tax rates for your store, ensure that you contact your taxation agency to determine the types and rates you should charge.

Use the Tax notebook to specify the following tax information:

• The tax jurisdictions to which you deliver orders. The jurisdictions are geographical regions, made up of a country or region and state or province combination. For example, CANADA, Ontario is a jurisdiction. WebSphere Commerce creates a default tax jurisdiction, WORLD, for every store. The WORLD jurisdiction cannot be deleted.

• The tax categories for your store. Create a category for each type of tax collect for your store. For example, create a GST category for the GST, or a State category for the state tax. You can create as many categories as necessary for your store.
  

  In the Tax notebook, sales tax categories you create are applied to the total price of the order. Shipping tax is applied to the total shipping charge for the order. The Tax notebook does not apply taxes on top of other taxes.

• The name of each tax category in your store that is displayed to your customers. If your store is displayed in multiple languages, you can define a display name for each language. For example, the name of the tax category may be translated into Japanese or German, or any language in your store.

• The tax rates (in percentage) charged to customers. Each rate is associated with a tax jurisdiction and tax category. For example, you can specify a 10% shipping tax for all orders shipped to Canada and a 12% shipping tax for orders shipped outside of Canada.

• The sales and shipping tax calculation codes that specify how sales and shipping taxes are calculated. For example, all sales taxes applicable to groceries could be grouped under a single sales tax code called groceries. A store typically only supports a single tax code scheme. WebSphere Commerce creates a default code that applies to any product that is not assigned to a tax code. After creating tax codes for your store, you assign the applicable tax categories to each code.

Related tasks

• Set up taxes

Related reference

• Example tax calculations