Interspire Product Knowledge Base

Interspire Shopping Cart has built-in support for both fixed and variable tax rates, depending on the customer's location. Generally you would only use fixed tax rates, or variable tax rates and not both at the same time. In this article you'll learn how to configure both fixed and variable tax rates for your store.

Configuring a fixed tax rate

Countries such as Australia and Canada who have one fixed country tax and only plan to ship locally or nationally should use the fixed rate tax method. It allows you to apply one flat tax rate to all products in your store. You can conmbine this with the ability to restrict shipping to the country you're in to allow only people from your country to place orders from your site. You can learn how to restrict which countries your store will accept orders from by reading this article.

To configure a fixed tax rate for your store, follow these simple steps:

1. Click on the Settings menu and choose the Store Settings option:
   
   
   
   
2. Click the Localization Settings tab
3. Under the Tax Settings section you can specify if your prices already include tax
4. If they do, tick this box and click Save
5. If they don't and you'd like tax automatically added to every product in your store, untick the Yes, prices already include tax option and type the tax rate (as a percentage) that you would like applied to all products into the Tax Rate box, and click Save like this:
   
   
   

If you typed in a tax rate then that percentage of the product's Price field will be added on as tax and displayed in your store as part of the product's price. If you would like tax rates to instead be calculated based on the customer's country and shown separately on the checkout page, then read on to learn about variable tax rates.

Configuring variable tax rates

Variable tax rates allow you to assign a specific tax rate (as a percentage of the order's total, including or excluding the shipping cost) to a country or country and state. You can create an unlimited number of variable tax rates as well as a default tax rate which will be applied to any customer whose country and state doesn't have a defined tax rate.

To configure variable tax rates for your store, follow these simple steps:

1. Click on the Settings menu and choose the Tax Settings option:
   
   
   
   
2. You will now see the Tax Rates page
3. Click Add a Tax Rate...
   
4. Fill out the form. If you choose a country that has a list of states then they will appear and you can restrict a tax rate to a particular country and state:
   
   
   
   
5. The Based On field allows you to apply the tax rate to the subtotal of the order, or the subtotal and shipping cost. Help tips next to each field provide more information if required
6. Once you've filled out the form click Save
7. You will be taken back to the Tax Settings page and your tax rate will appear in the list. It will also be enabled in your store if you ticked the Yes, this tax rate is enabled checkbox when creating it