The “Taxes” section is the reference the store’s taxes are reckoned by. It answers three questions: where a tax applies (areas), what is taken (tax groups and their rates) and how a rate is applied in a particular place (rules). A product gets its taxes by being assigned a tax group in the “Prices” section, and which rates apply and at what size is decided by the customer’s area.
Three tabs: “Areas”, “Rates” and “Rules”. The section is edited in locking mode — the changes are applied with the “Save” / “Save and exit” buttons (see “Three Data Working Modes”).
On the left is the “Areas” tree, on the right the additional options of the selected area.
An area is any node of a territorial division: a country, a state, a region, a city, a district, down to a quarter. The depth of the tree is not limited — the division goes as deep as the taxes require: one node is enough for a single country, the United States get their states, and, where needed, counties and cities.
The properties of an area (the “Edit area” button):
“Set/clear the group flag” turns a node into a folder — it serves for grouping (for example, “Europe”) and carries no rules.
The additional options of areas are defined in the “Settings Registry” (the “tax areas” placement) and assigned in the right-hand column — from a list, as free text or by an input mask (see “Settings Registry”).
On the left are the “Tax groups”, on the right the “Tax rates” of the selected group.
A tax group is the tax profile of a product, and it is the group that gets assigned to a product in the “Prices”. There are usually few groups: “Standard products”, “Reduced”, “Excisable”, “No tax”. The fields of a group: Key and Name.
A rate is one tax inside a group:
A group may hold several rates — a federal tax and a provincial one, for example. The order of the rates is set with the move buttons and decides the order of the rows in the rules and in the calculation.
The values of a rate are its defaults: they apply wherever the rule of an area has not set its own (see below).
On the left is the tree of areas, on the right the “Rate rules” of the selected area. Folders have no rules — the table is shown only for real areas.
A rule binds a rate to an area and says how it is applied:
How the rules work:
One store, one country, VAT in the price. A “Standard products” group with a “VAT 20%” rate (Percent = 20). One area — the country of the store. One rule: the VAT rate, type “in the price”. Every product gets the group in the “Prices”.
Different categories of products. The groups “Standard” (20%), “Reduced” (7%), “No VAT” (a rate of 0%). Products are spread across the groups through group assignments in the “Prices”. The rules are the same, one per rate in the country.
Selling into several countries. An area per country. For each one, a rule on the VAT rate with an “own rate”: Germany 19, Poland 23, countries outside the union — 0 (export). At home the default value applies, without the flag.
The United States: sales tax by state. Inside the “USA” area — the states, and, where needed, counties and cities inside the states. A “Sales tax” rate with a percentage of 0 by default; a rule per state with a percentage of its own, type “on top of the price”. A city with its own percentage overrides the state automatically.
Excise. A second rate in the “Excisable” group, with a fixed Amount per unit of the product and a currency. The rule is added in those areas where the excise applies.
In the “Prices” section a product has a “Tax group” column (switched on with the “Table Designer”) and a row in the group assignments — the group can be set or cleared on a whole set of products at once.
The tax amounts are then reckoned from this data by the store’s storefront when an order is placed.
The value lists are configured by the developer in the “Development” section → “Settings Registry”: the Type and the Structure of an area, the Type of a rate’s calculation, the Type of a rule’s adjustment, and also the tree of additional options of areas (the “tax areas” placement).