Tax

Tax in OrderDen is charged per line, at rates you name and manage. A line points at a tax, such as "WA State 6.5%" or a group that charges state, county and city together, and the document's totals list each rate by name.

Set up your rates

The rates are in Company Settings → Taxes.

• Add a rate with a name, a percentage (up to three decimals, so 9.975% works) and its place in the list. It's available on document lines right away.
• Deactivate a rate you've stopped charging. It leaves the pickers, but a group you built that includes it still charges it, so take it out of those groups too.
• Delete a rate you added by mistake. Deleting takes it out of every group (and deletes a group left empty). While a quote, order or invoice that can still be edited charges it, OrderDen won't delete it and says how many do: deactivate it instead. Paid and void invoices, converted quotes and canceled orders keep the rate and the money they charged. A group can't be deleted while an open document charges it either.

Groups: several rates on one line

When a sale is taxed by more than one authority, build a group: name it, tick the rates it charges, and pick it on a line like any other tax. The order you tick them in is the order they're charged.

That order only matters for a compound rate, one charged on the line total plus the tax the rates before it added. That's rare. Quebec's QST, for example, has been charged on the price before GST since 2013, so it isn't compound. Tick Compound only if the tax authority tells you to.

Groups and plain rates sit side by side in every picker, so a workspace that charges one flat rate never has to think about groups.

What a line is taxed at

When you add a line, OrderDen fills in its tax, in this order:

1. What you pick on the line, including "No tax". Only a tax-exempt client or a tip line overrides it.
2. The item's default. Set Default tax on an item that's taxed differently from everything else. Left blank, the item uses the workspace default. To never tax an item, add a 0% rate and pick it there.
3. The workspace default, set in Company Settings → Sales defaults. Leave it at "No tax" if most of what you sell isn't taxed.

Every line also has a Not taxable tick, for a one-off that's exempt whatever tax it would otherwise have.

A 0% rate and "No tax" look the same everywhere: a 0% rate gets no row in the totals, and its sales count as non-taxable on the tax report.

Tax-exempt clients

A client marked Tax exempt (in the Billing & tax card on their Money tab) is never charged tax. Their new document lines come in untaxed and locked, and their documents carry a Tax exempt badge with the exemption reason you recorded, so the certificate number is on the paperwork. Their Tax ID prints beside it. The totals show tax of $0.00.

The exemption is applied when a document is saved, and the badge follows the client's current setting. Clear the flag and their new documents are taxed again, and so is any unpaid document of theirs the next time it's saved.

Discounts and tax

A discount on one line comes off that line before its tax is worked out. A discount on the whole document is shared across the lines in proportion to what each is worth, and each taxable line is taxed on what's left. Sharing it over every line, not only the taxable ones, keeps a mixed document right: a $20 discount on a document with one taxable and one untaxed $100 line takes $10 off each, so tax is charged on $90.

The sharing is exact to the cent, with any leftover cent on the largest line, so the lines always add back to the document's total.

Shipping

Shipping isn't taxed unless you say so. Pick a Tax on shipping group next to the shipping amount on the document and it's charged the same way a line is. Leave it at Not taxed, the default, where shipping isn't taxable.

What the document shows

The totals list one row per rate the document charged, by name and percentage, on the document page, the print, the email, the PDF and the client portal. A deposit, prepayment or progress invoice is taxed the way the quote or order it comes from is: a share of the taxed work at its rates, a share of the untaxed work at none. A final invoice takes each deposit's tax back off with it, so the tax on the deposits and the final invoice together is the tax on the work.

Tax is worked out when a document is saved. A paid or void invoice keeps its figures. Saving any other document again charges today's rates and the client's current exemption, so changing a rate changes what an open document charges the next time someone saves it.

The tax you've collected

Reports → Tax collected shows tax charged per rate and per period across the invoices you've issued. Drafts, voided and written-off invoices, and opening balances, are left out. It shows the taxable sales behind each figure and the non-taxable sales beside them (every line charged no tax, including 0% rates), so the totals reconcile against your revenue. Switch the period between day, week and month, and download it as CSV.

Through the API

Rates and groups are at /api/v1/tax-rates and /api/v1/tax-groups. Document lines take taxGroupId and taxable, documents take shippingTaxGroupId, and every document response has a taxBreakdown. The report is at /api/v1/reports/tax-collected. See the API reference.