Conditional Food taxes

[IntermissionBee]

Hi! We are a brewery about to start selling food and need assistance with setting up local food taxes. 

We need to add a conditional tax if we sell food. Examples:

Pizza alone - food taxed

Pizza & beers - food taxed

Just beers - no food tax

Beers & snacks - no food tax

See image for details from the county.  

Is there a way to do this within Square?

 

[sayra]

Hello @IntermissionBee - The ability to use Conditional Sales Tax in Square is possible. In addition, there are many ways you can Create and Manage your tax items. 

I'm also going to lean on some of our Super Sellers to see if they have any suggestions on how you can best set up your taxes. I'm sure one of them has a similar business as yours🌟. @alexandriak @AmyB1 @bagelboss @dasap1234 @DaveMellow @Dbw2048 @Donnie-M @GoGoGuest @Goldneye @GourmetOnWheels @HC_Charlie @homeprogreen @HvBx_WA @JamesSandbar @jjgard @JupiterGames @LocavoreStore @londontea @MAXSDELI @MichiganFarmsta @mooretoys @page158 @pessosices.

Hope this helps! 

[GourmetOnWheels]

In California, for food and drinks, no sales tax is required for take-out or delivery. Only for that what is consumed on the premise. I do not know the rules in Virginia.

René

[homeprogreen]

Might want to double check that, hot food sold to go or delivery is subject to California sales tax the same as if it was consumed on the premises. 

[homeprogreen]

This is actually fairly simple to set up. From your dashboard you would click on items then scroll down until you see Sales Tax on the left hand side. Click that and you will see create tax. Create the tax with the amount or percentage required then you will have a few options. One is to apply to all items and the other option is to select the items or categories the tax applies to. Quicker to just set up all your food items up in a category called ‘ food ‘ then have the tax automatically apply to all items sold in that category. You also have the option to create tax rules which would be for like if your taxing authority required taxes say on to go orders the rule would be to apply the tax if you selected to

[IntermissionBee]

Here are my conditional taxes - "with food" is the issue:

Pizza alone - food taxed

Pizza & Beers - food taxed

Pizza & Snacks - food taxed

Just beers - no food tax

Beers & Snacks - no food tax

Just Snacks - no food tax

Is there a way to do this? I can't figure this one out.

[homeprogreen]

You’re overthinking it. So create the food tax like I explained above. Food is always taxed so the easy way is to create 3 categories as an example. Food category, beer category, snack category. Build out your menu and when creating each item assign them to the proper category. So food category is set to always be taxed. Now it’s time to build an order. Joe wants a beer and snacks so when you add those 2 items to the order the system doesn’t apply tax. Sam just wants a beer, again the system setup as I explained won’t add tax. Karen decides that she wants a pizza & beer so when you build the order in the system it will automatically add the food tax to the ticket for the pizza and not tax the beer on the ticket. That will also help at reporting time since your sales report will have the line showing how much taxable sales you had and the amount of tax you collected. If you did need to also tax the beer because of the fact that it’s being sold with pizza then you have 2 options. Easiest would be to touch the beer in the cart which will open that item, scroll down and toggle the tax ( when you create a tax it’s always available for every item even if not set to automatically apply) so it charges it for that one sale. Option 2 is one that I haven’t personally used but that would be to create a rule in the food tax that beer is taxed if sold with pizza. One suggestion when setting up the tax is to not have it add to the price of the item. When you toggle it to add to the price of an item instead of as its own line on bottom of ticket customers tend to think you’ve overcharged them. Example would be if pizza is 10 dollars and tax is a dollar, if you set the tax to add to price then pizza shows up on ticket as 11 dollars instead of 10 dollars with a 1 dollar tax on food tax line at bottom of ticket.

[IntermissionBee]

I understand everything you are saying and have setup my taxes properly.

Option 1 would leave it up to human error if they forget to change the tax.

Option 2 is what I need to know how to setup since I have to configure it for "with food". I can't figure out how to do this, I only see an option for taxing by Delivery Option, not by other criteria like category.

[homeprogreen]

Ah ok. So you would want to edit the tax and create the rule that tax is applied to ticket anytime something from the food category is selected. That will apply the tax automatically and remove the chance for human error. Sorry for my confusion. I thought that “ food tax” meant it was only applied to the food item on a combo ticket

[IntermissionBee]

Here are the options to Create a Tax Rule. It says to "Select the tax that should NOT be applied based on individual locations, dining options, and item choice." You have to select something for each field. I don't see how to set the Tax Rule for "with food" and "without food". Is this even an option?

[IntermissionBee]

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