thread Sales taxable conditional on modifier in Payments Troubleshooting

Sales taxable conditional on modifier

Jonathan_Kim — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 04:36:30 GMT

Hi! I sell hot food but a lot of customers want it cold to take home and heat up later by themselves. When I sell it hot, it's sales taxable; when I sell it cold, it's not. I have a modifier with the two options of "hot for now" and "cold for later." I know there are conditions for sales tax based on price, or dining option, but I would love to be able to charge sales tax based on the modifier selection.

If anyone knows how to do this, please chime in; otherwise, Square can we put this in as a feature request? Thanks!

Re: Sales taxable conditional on modifier

Sammie_C — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:18:07 GMT

Hi there, @Jonathan_Kim, I appreciate you reaching out!

I am going to go ahead and tag in a few of our amazing Square Champions to see if they know of any workarounds, or if this would be a Feature Request.

If our Champions are not aware of a way to do so, I can always reach out to our Account Services team to see if this is possible. I will keep an eye out for replies, in case not.

@TheRealChipA, @rtfulk, and @perkits, do you all know if this is possible, or do you all know of any potential workarounds? I really appreciate any insight you all might have!

Re: Sales taxable conditional on modifier

rtfulk — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 20:58:03 GMT

@Jonathan_Kim Do you want to keep a record of each menu item you sell hot or cold? If not then you could make an item labeled Cold Food and set it as non taxable and just ring the cold food up under that item. If you need to keep a record, then when you set the modifier for cold food on an item, could you just tap that item and manually turn off the tax?

Re: Sales taxable conditional on modifier

TheRealChipA — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:06:48 GMT

@Sammie_C @Jonathan_Kim Sorry for the delay. I'm out of town right now and only checking in occasionally.

First, sales tax changes via modifiers is not a thing right now. That would require a feature request be submitted. Otherwise, the only work-around I can possibly think of would not be automatic, either. Just as your employees would have to remember to change Dining Option for take-out items, they'd have to remember to remove the sales taxes from items that are take-out. But I guess all of your options at this point require some manual thinking and intervention.