Is there a way to turn off sales tax on specific items during back to school tax exempt weekend?

[specialtiesgame]

Specific school supplies are tax exempt during the weekend coming up in my state.  Is there a way to make those items tax exempt for the specific days?  It's time consuming to turn off tax on those items each time they are sold, and employees may not apply the tax rules correctly.  I would like to be able to set it up ahead of time, like you can for limited time discounts.  Is this possible?

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

@specialtiesgame Wow, you made me work for this one.  I tried two different scenarios before I finally found the one and only one that seems to work for disabling sales tax on SOME items temporarily.  First I want to say that I certainly hope that the list of items that are temporarily tax exempt is not too long because this is the ONLY way I could find to do it.  But, at least it works.

1. Go to your online dashboard > Settings > Account & Settings  > Business information > Sales Taxes.
2. Choose the tax rate that you are going to disable for selected items.
3. In the “Tax application” section, set “Apply tax to” to “Select items.”
4. Click the next box to open the drop-down and either:
   1. Click “select all,” after which you will deselect all items that are non-taxable for the weekend
   2. OR… Select ONLY the items that WILL BE TAXABLE for the weekend.
   3. Then click the Done button
5. Click the Save button
6. THIS IS IMPORTANT… Even after the windows close, give the server time to cycle through all of your items and mark them taxable and non-taxable.  I made the mistake of checking too soon before that process was done.

After the weekend is over, do the following to reset all current AND future items to taxable.

1. Go to your online dashboard > Settings > Account & Settings  > Business information > Sales Taxes.
2. Choose the tax rate that you previously chose.
3. In the “Tax application” section, set “All current and future taxable items at selected locations.”
4. Click the Save button.
5. Again give it a little time to be safe.

All items in your library should now be taxable, as will all future items that you add.

This is the only foolproof procedure I can figure out.  I tried doing going to the item catalog and selecting multiple items, clicking Actions and setting them as non-taxable.  But, in the cases where you have multiple sales tax jurisdictions this would be WRONG.  Also, turning taxes back on after this method is very time consuming as you have to edit each item in your library, one by one.  Not good.

[TheRealChipA]

@specialtiesgame One more thing.  After you do this (both before and after the weekend), it would be a great idea to force close all of your POS apps in your store and restart them.  This will force-load your item library from scratch.  Better safe than sorry.

Also, the more I think about it, I understand why the engineers implemented it this way.  For those of us with only one sale tax jurisdiction it makes no sense at all.  But for those many businesses that are subject to multiple sales taxes this is the ONLY way to be very specific about which taxes you are disabling.  Honestly if your tax jurisdiction would just disable ALL SALES TAXES FOR ALL ITEMS for the weekend, then your could just disable the entire tax rate for the weekend.  But, since they are only doing this for some items, you are stuck with some work.

[specialtiesgame]

It would be so much simpler if it applied to everything!  Unfortunately, the list of exempt items is long and very specific.  I can see how it would be much more difficult for stores with multiple taxing districts.  It's got to be a nightmare during this school sales tax holiday season, since many states have them and the rules and dates are different for each. 

I had hoped to avoid the late night selecting item by item, but if that's the only way...  Thanks for your response!  I appreciate all you do for the community.

[Candlestore]

@specialtiesgame ;

Along with the way @TheRealChipA said you could click on your Catalog Items to turn Off and On the tax, you can also ring up the tax with the sale, then Slide Tax to no tax for each transaction for that time frame if everything in the cart is non taxable.  

The other thing you could do which is my preferred method:

1.  Log in on your Square Dashboard
2. Goto your Items
3. Filter the Items or Category and select only the ones that will be tax free 
4. Export the filtered list
5. Open the exported file 
6. Find the column that has Sales Tax ( last columns area)
7. Change Tax from Yes to No
8. Save file as No tax.
9. After sale upload the File you downloaded originally

When you export your Catalog from square the file is catalog xxxxxxx, so when you open and edit it then save as No Tax you will have to files Catalog xxxxxx and No Tax files.    By doing this you can save alot of time editing your taxed items to no tax or vice versa.