Local Taxes in Square Invoices

[arghthor]

Pennsylvania recently changed its laws so shipped orders within the state must collect the taxes of the destination. Square Online can do this automatically. I am begging for this functionality to be applied to Invoices. From what I've read here, this isn't unique to Pennsylvania but occurs in at least California too.

It isn't reasonable to turn on and off taxes on every line item on every invoice created. 

[kacey_k]

You are completely right—manually calculating destination-based sales tax for every single invoice line item is incredibly tedious and open to errors. While Square Online handles this automatically through its integration with TaxJar, standard Square Invoices don't dynamically read the customer's shipping address to pull the hyper-local tax rate at the time of creation.

Until Square adds automatic destination-based tax directly into the Invoice builder, here are the two best workarounds to avoid manually turning individual taxes on and off line-by-line:

Workaround 1: Create Pre-Set Regional "Tax Rules"

Instead of micro-managing taxes item by item, you can create a single tax rule for a specific region or rate and apply it to the entire invoice with one click.

1. Go to your online Square Dashboard > Account & Settings > Business information > Taxes.
2. Click Create Tax and set up the specific Pennsylvania destination rate you need.
3. In the tax settings, choose Apply tax to custom amount or set it to apply to specific item categories by default.
4. When creating an invoice, you can quickly add or remove this specific tax rule from the entire invoice total rather than clicking every individual line item.

Workaround 2: Invoice via a Square Online Checkout Link

If you need the system to calculate the exact, up-to-the-minute local tax automatically using the customer's shipping address, you can use a checkout link instead of a traditional invoice.

1. Go to your Square Dashboard > Payments > Online Checkout.
2. Click Create checkout link and select Collect a Payment or Sell an Item.
3. Enter the details and total amount for the customer's order.
4. Because this link routes through your Square Online checkout system, it will automatically calculate and apply the correct destination-based tax once the customer types in their shipping address.
5. Copy the link and email it directly to your customer.

I am also going to formally track your post as a feature request for the Product Team. Bringing dynamic destination-based tax calculations over from Square Online to Square Invoices is a massive need for businesses dealing with evolving state