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Create and manage sales tax settings

Who is this article for?
Sellers with account & settings permissions. Set permissions in Square Dashboard.

About sales tax settings

With Square, you can automatically apply GST tax to your in-person and online sales, and create custom taxes with specific rules. You can also enable your team members to edit taxes at the time of sale through your team permissions, and track your taxable and non-taxable sales from your Square Dashboard.

Square’s processing fees are taken out of the total amount of each transaction — including taxes and tip.

Before you begin

You can manage all taxes through your Square Dashboard and set location-specific sales taxes through your point of sale app. Once taxes are configured, they will be automatically applied to your point of sale and online orders. Tax collection is enabled by default for online orders.

DISCLAIMER: Although Square provides tools that help you efficiently create and manage taxes, we cannot guarantee the applicability and accuracy of our tax tools. We also cannot offer tax advice or consulting services. It is solely your responsibility to accurately configure, charge, collect and remit applicable taxes on your orders. To ensure taxes are applied and filed correctly for your specific business needs, we recommend consulting a tax adviser.

Create sales taxes

You can create sales taxes through the Square Dashboard or your point of sale app.

Square Dashboard

  1. Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Settings > Account & Settings > Payment > Sales taxes.
  2. For Sales taxes, select Create tax.
  3. Under Details, enter the tax name and rate and select the locations where the rate applies.
  4. Under Tax application, choose to apply the tax to All current and future taxable items at selected locations or choose Select items to choose specific items to apply the rate to. If an item is set as non-taxable, taxes won’t be automatically applied to the item on any orders across Square Online or Square Point of Sale.
  5. Toggle on Apply tax to custom amounts to apply the tax to any custom amounts added to the cart.
  6. Under Tax calculation, choose Additive tax to have tax as a separate line item on customer receipts or Inclusive tax to have tax included in the item price.
  7. Under Tax exemption, toggle on Add exemption rule to specify when this tax should not be applied.
  8. Select Save when finished.

Point of sale app

  1. Open your point of sale app and select ≡ More > Settings > Checkout > Sales taxes.
  2. Select the plus icon (+) to create a new tax.
  3. Enter the tax name and rate.
  4. Under Tax application, choose to apply the tax to All items and services (current and future) or choose Select items to choose specific items to apply the rate to. If an item is set as non-taxable, taxes won’t be automatically applied to the item on any orders across Square Online or Square Point of Sale.
  5. Toggle on Apply tax to custom amounts to apply the tax to any custom amounts added to the cart.
  6. Tap Item pricing and select Add tax to item price to have tax as a separate line item on customer receipts or select Include tax in item price to have tax included in the item price.
  7. Tap Save.

Disable or delete sales taxes

You can disable or delete your sales tax rates at any time from either your Square Dashboard or your point of sale app. Disabling a tax makes it no longer applicable to purchases. If you delete a tax, you cannot undo the deletion, and you will have to create the tax again.

Square Dashboard

  1. Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Settings > Account & Settings > Payment > Sales taxes.
  2. Under Sales taxes, select the tax you want to disable or delete.
  3. Select the Actions drop-down menu and select Disable tax or Delete tax.

Point of sale app

  1. From your point of sale app, tap ≡ More > Settings > Checkout > Sales taxes.
  2. Select the tax you want to disable or delete.
  3. To disable the tax, toggle off Enabled.
  4. To delete the tax, tap Delete tax from this location.

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