Sales Tax Integration and Calculation for eCommerce

If you’re an eCommerce business, sales taxes can often be tricky things to consider. Not all states and countries have the same sales tax rates, and it is important to understand which rate to adhere to and how it will affect your customer. Read on for an introduction to sales tax integration for eCommerce website development.

Sales Tax Integration

One of the most significant things to consider in sales tax integration is whether your integrated sales tax platform can apply taxes only in certain states, and whether it can tax by country, region, and province. This is important for all types of eCommerce, including C2C, B2C, and B2B sales tax. If it can, this will reduce a great deal of struggle. You’ll also want to make sure your sales tax platform integrates smoothly with your accounting platform of choice, like Quickbooks.

Sales Tax Calculation

We can design your website so it pulls from the third-party sales tax calculation resource and caches the data. This allows for a monthly update to tax data, so you only have to hit your third-party API once a month, which means reduced cost for your business.

Clarity often uses third-party sources like Avalara for sales tax calculation, since this will reduce overhead for our clients. We can design your website so it pulls from the third-party sales tax calculation resource and caches the data. This allows for a monthly update to tax data, so you only have to hit your third-party API once a month, which means reduced costs for your business. We can also provide intermediate options depending on your sales volume and budget; but in general, if your sales aren’t high-volume, a third-party API is a great solution. They cost less to implement, but do have an ongoing fee associated with them.

Tax Support for eCommerce

Clarity’s eCommerce platform also offers the following forms of tax support:

• Real-time tax calculation  
• The ability to apply a sales tax only in certain states 
• Tax by country, region, province, or tax district for international eCommerce development
• The ability to set your own tax rates: you can charge a flat tax rate, or no tax at all.  
• Shipping integration so the tax can be easily applied to shipping costs 
• Individual Products can be marked taxable or tax-exempt 
• Business-to-business sales tax for B2B transactions
• VAT/GST Tax 

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