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Taxes are a complex subject, which should be fully understood as it can have a significant impact on your product prices or your shipping fees. While this user-guide is not meant to teach all the ins-and-outs of taxes, we will try our best give you pointers. Taxes are "compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions". In short, every product you sell is subject to sales taxes, which depend on your state's tax laws. In effect, you contribute to your state or government functioning (public goods and services) with a percentage of all your sales, as defined by local tax rates. There are hosts of tax rates in the World, and they vary considerably from one country to another, and even within a single country if it has federal states (USA, Germany, Spain, Russia...). You should therefore make sure to strictly conform to your country's tax laws, and even those of your state or town if they apply to you. Check with your local tax representative as soon as possible in order to get all the official details. Tax rules are a way for you to make it so that taxes are only applied to select |
By default in PrestaShop, a tax applies to all countries/states/zones. If order to apply a specific tax rate for a single country or a set of countries (and not some others), you must create a tax rule. The tax rule is then applied on a per-product basis, during the creation of the product ("Prices" tab).
You cannot directly apply a tax to a product, you can only apply tax rules. Therefore, you must first register all relevant taxes, then create a tax rule for that tax in order to specify the countries the tax applies, and finally set the tax rule to the product.
A few sample taxes rules are already in place, which depend on the country you chose for your shop during the installation of PrestaShop. The tax rules are set for each tax: the rules actually serve as a kind of country filter, limiting the use of that tax to a specific set of countries.
You should edit a couple of the presented taxes rules in order to get a better grasp of how tax rules can be set.
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Creating a new tax rule is done in two steps:
- Creating Create the tax . rule:
- Click on the "Add new" button.
- In the form that appears, name the tax. Use a telling name: use the tax's country code, its name, maybe even its rate, so as to find it again easily. If PrestaShop already has tax rules for the target country, use their name as a template.
- Select whether the tax should be enabled from the get-go or not. You can enable it later if needed.
- Click the "Save and stay" button. The page reloads, with a table header at the bottom.
- Creating a country tax rule. Specify the country and behaviors:
- Click on the "Add new tax rule" button.
- A new form appears. Fill in the fields:
- Country. The target country for the tax you are creating.
- State. Some countries have federal states registered in PrestaShop (see the "States" page, under the "Localization" tab). In that case, you can make the tax even more specific, or choose to have it applied to the whole country. You can select more than one state by pressing the Ctrl key when clicking on state names.
- Zip Code range. Whether the country has registered states or not, you can further specify the tax application using the customer's zip code. This field enable you to define zip codes in which the tax should be applied: either enter a single zip code, or define a range using the dash. For instance, use "75000-75012" to create a range for all zip codes between these two.
- Behavior. Some customers might have an address that matches more than one of your tax rules. In that case, you can choose how this tax rule should behave:
- This Tax Only. Will apply only this tax, not any of the other matching taxes.
- Combine. Combine taxes. For instance: 100€ + (10% + 5% => 15%) => 115€.
- One After Another. Apply taxes one after another. For instance: 100€ + 10% => 110€ + 5% => 115.5€.
- Tax. The tax to be used for this tax rule. That tax must already be registered in PrestaShop. If not: choose "Not tax", disable the tax rule, save it, go create a tax in the "Taxes" page, then come back to edit the tax rule.
- Description. You may add a short text as a reminder of why this tax rule exists for this country.
- Country. The target country for the tax you are creating.
- Click "Save and stay". The country is added to the table below, and you can start adding another country using the new-empty fields.
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By default in PrestaShop, a tax applies to all countries/states/zones. If order to apply a specific tax rate for a single country or a set of countries (and not some others), you must create a tax rule. The tax rule is then applied on a per-product basis, during the creation of the product ("Prices" tab).
You cannot directly apply a tax to a product, you can only apply tax rules. Therefore, you must first register all relevant taxes, then create a tax rule for that tax in order to specify the countries the tax applies, and finally set the tax rule to the product.
Tax Options
At the bottom of the page is the "Tax options" section. These options apply to the whole shop, and all of the orders.
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- Enable tax. Whether or not taxes are included in each purchase.
- Display tax in cart. You might prefer the customer not to be aware of the taxes that are applied to the order. In that case, disable this option.
- Base on. The customer can choose to have the product not delivered at the same address as the one the order invoice should be sent to. This can have a great impact on taxes. By default, PrestaShop bases its tax rates on the delivery address, but you can choose to have them based on the billing address.
- Use ecotax. The ecotax refers to "taxes intended to promote ecologically sustainable activities via economic incentives". It is a tax that shop owners pay in order to "feel the social burden of their actions". Learn more about ecotax on this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotax
Once you have enable the use of ecotax, all your products will feature an "Eco-tax (tax incl.)" field in their "Prices" tab. You should fill that field with the exact value of the tax, which depends on your country's tax laws (it is probably based on the product's price).
Note that if you have set ecotaxes for your products already, and that you choose to disable ecotax, then all your products will lose their ecotax settings.
If you decide to enable the ecotax after having added products, you will have to edit them all in order to set the tax properly for each product.
The ecotax will also appear to the customer, on the product's page:
Adding A New Tax
When you want to add another tax; simply click on the "Add New" button seen in the previous screenshot, and this form will appear:
Fill in the name of the tax ("TVA", for example), and its rate (in the XX.XX format), and save.
Note: It is a good idea Adding a new tax is very easy, because tax rules take out all the burden of having to specify the countries where the tax applies. The creation form is therefore very short:
- Name. Be very specific, as this will help you build tax rules faster.
It is a recommended to add reminders within the name, such as the country/group/zone the tax applies to, and its rate
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- . This greatly helps you remember which tax is to be
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- used in a tax rule.
- Rate. The exact rate, in the XX.XX format.
- Enable. You can disable and re-enable a tax at any time.
Translations
PrestaShop provides you with full translation tool for your shop. This helps you add and edit the current translations. This way, you are the master of your shop, and can handle your translated strings without having to wait for translators to publish their corrections.
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