Taxes

A functional store must include data on taxes. Taxation involves charging and collecting taxes on the goods and services that are sold by 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 B2C business model, the Operations Manager can also set the taxes.

You specify tax settings for the store using the Tax notebook. Using this notebook, we can set up or change tax information so that taxes are displayed on each order. Before you specify tax rates for the store, ensure that you contact your taxation agency to determine the types and rates to 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 the store. Create a category for each type of tax we must collect for the store. For example, create a GST category for the GST, or a State category for the state tax. We can create as many categories as necessary for the store.

  Note: 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 the store displayed to our customers. If the store is displayed in multiple languages, we can define a display name for each language. For example, the name of the tax category might 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, we can specify a 10% shipping tax for all orders that are shipped to Canada and a 12% shipping tax for orders that are 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 supports only 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 the store, you assign the applicable tax categories to each code.