Taxes for Online Store vs. Taxes for POS

[heart_and_lore]

I have an online store and I also do markets around the state, each market has a different tax. When I select a different tax for a market, it applies to the online store. How do I keep one tax for just online products and apply different taxes to POS for in-person sales?

[HC_Charlie]

Hello @heart_and_lore thanks for your post, and welcome to the Square Community! As far as Tax rates go in Square, you shouldn't have to change or turn off/turn on taxes. I think if you set them based on everywhere you may sell, Square will auto calculate the amount of sales tax to collect.

Visit this area in your Dashboard to add your settings:

https://app.squareup.com/dashboard/business/manual-taxes

Your online store collects taxes based on where your business is located. You only need to collect tax for online sales where you have a "presence" or physical location. So if you business is based in (example: New York), then Square would only charge and collect to orders shipped to a buyer located in New York. If a buyer in Texas makes a purchase from your website, they would be responsible for claiming an online purchase when they file their income taxes...but you are not responsible to collect and remit that tax.

So you really only need to set up In Person locations to collect sales tax. If you don't sell in multiple states, you'll only need to setup a single location for your state. I hope this helps answer your question.

[heart_and_lore]

The online store automatically calculates my location taxes. However, I do in-person markets all around the state and each locality has different city taxes. I have to set up different taxes to charge based on the city I'm selling in, but when I select it - it changes all my online products to that sales tax as well. I want my online taxes to stay the same, and be able to toggle different tax rates for in-person markets.

[TheRealChipA]

@heart_and_lore You can do this.  In the account & settings > Payments > Sales Taxes page, there are two place to change sales taxes — one for in-person sales and the other for online sales.  I think your mistake is changing the tax registrations (which are for online sales).  You’ll need to use the in-person sales taxes to change your POS sales tax rate.  Just be sure to name it with the city and state name, and the correct tax rate, so that your sales tax report will show you what cities you need to file and how much, etc.  It’s a little manual work, but not much, thankfully.

[heart_and_lore]

Payments section does not have have a taxes link. Would I have to set up under the link POS system? Under Account & Settings, then Taxes, is where Sales Taxes is. But then there isn't a separate online tax and in-person tax option, just input all the different taxes in that section. Which is what I've done, but again - when I toggle on a different tax rate, it changes the store taxation as well.

[TheRealChipA]

@heart_and_lore Odd.  Can you post a screen shot of that page?  It doesn’t look like mine below?

[heart_and_lore]

Hi Chip,

Thanks for the screenshot, really helpful - I'm a visual learner! I have my taxes set up on this, but they then apply to the online products as well.

[TheRealChipA]

1) Can you do a screen shot of your page at Account & Settings > Payments > Sales Taxes?

2) Go to Online > Shared Settings > Sales Taxes.  Do a screen shot of that page and post it here, as well.

Thank you.

[heart_and_lore]

[heart_and_lore]

So whenever I toggle a different in-person tax as enabled, it changes the products online as well.

[TheRealChipA]

Thanks. I also need to see the screen shot here:

Go to Online > Shared Settings > Sales Taxes.  

[heart_and_lore]

There is no "Shared Settings" option. Just settings, then Sales Taxes, which takes me back to the page I sent screenshots of. 

Each item requires I select a tax, so I select the "loveland" one as that's home base, but then again - when I choose a different in person tax rate for each market, it applies to all the online ones.

[TheRealChipA]

Hmmm..  Wait a minute.  Do you have a Square Online store, or a Weebly store?  Both are owned by Square, but both are very different.  Do you use the legacy Weebly site editor or the newer Square Online site editor?

[heart_and_lore]

The new Online store. No Weebly.

[TheRealChipA]

Ok. I need to do a little research. I’m not sure why you don’t have shared settings for your online store so that’s where I need to start. That is where I think the problem lies, though. I’ll be back with you once I have an answer. 

[TheRealChipA]

Also if I needed to set up a Zoom call for us to look at a few things on your dashboard rather than go back an forth with lots of posts, would you be willing to do that? It might help us resolve this faster. I know what is going on. And Shared Settings is the place to fix it. I just need to figure out where that is on your account. 

[TheRealChipA]

@heart_and_lore Any thought on us setting up that Zoom call?  I need to visualize the differences between what I’m seeing on my dashboard and what you are seeing.  If you don’t want to do that, then I’ll take the Square Moderators here to jump in.