How Taxes Work
Managing Taxes
Convictional enables tax calculation both manually and through our integration with TaxJar service (a Stripe company).
As a user, you retain the ability to overwrite calculated tax values. The tax calculations are based on:
- Base Price of the Order: As a seller, you are invoicing the buyer for the base price of order and not the retail price. We are pulling tax information for this base amount.
- No shipping cost: The process for fulfillments is assumed to be priced into the base price.
- Shipping Address: This is the shipping address of the customer.
- Billing Address: This is the billing address for your business. Since the order is being shipped from one place to another, we calculate tax using the billing address (to) and the shipping address (from).
Once the estimated taxes are pulled down from the TaxJar service, we allow you to continue to modify them. If you are unsure about taxes, here is a Sales Tax calculator offered by TaxJAR, this State Sales Tax map by TaxJAR or contact tax professional.
Tax Types
Goods and Services Tax
The Goods and Services tax (GST) applies nationally across Canada as a broad-based consumption tax. There are a few provinces that harmonized their provincial sales taxes with the GST to implement the HST. For our invoicing system, we have GST and Province Sales tax as two independent tax types.
More information can be found on The Government of Canada website. There are many additional sources for information regarding taxes (Example) through a search.
Provincial Sales Tax
Most provinces charge Provincial Sales Tax (PST) on broad-based consumption. Some province, such as New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island use Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) instead of two individual taxes rates. However, most buyer systems keep the two tax rates separate, and therefore you will need to charge them as individual. The Retail Council has provided a list of sale tax rates.
You can find more information about Provincial Sales Tax on the individual province's websites.
State Tax
State tax are taxes placed on the sale or lease of goods and services in the United States. The rate changes from state to state. You can read further on TaxJAR or Sales Tax Institute.
County Sales Tax
County Sales tax are taxes placed on the sale or lease of goods and services depending on the county.
City Sales Tax
City Sales tax are taxes placed on the sale or lease of goods and services depending on the city.
Federal Excise Tax
An excise tax is a legislated tax on specific goods or services at purchase such as fuel, tobacco, and alcohol. Excise taxes are intranational taxes imposed within a government infrastructure rather than international taxes imposed across country borders. You can read further here.
Local Sales Tax
Local Sales tax are taxes placed on the sale or lease of goods and services.
Value-Added Tax (VAT)
VAT is not currently calculated on Convictional-generated invoices. The recommended approach is to invoice your partner a monthly invoice for additional VAT-owed. This manual invoice can be sent via Stripe.
What if it's wrong?
That's not a problem! We are currently in Beta with our taxes feature and looking for insights on issues. We appreciate any feedback, and you have full control to overwrite all tax inputs.
