Sèdjro Gbaguidi’s accountant, Mahougnon Tossou, has defined the group’s VAT rates and taxes. Now she must say where they apply. Most products of the Cotonou company follow the same treatment, a few do not, and orders may carry a levy of their own. She does not want to set the tax of each product one by one, nor discover at the till that a price cannot be calculated. This page follows Mahougnon as she assigns taxes. The same steps apply to any business with taxable and non-taxable goods, such as a pharmacy or a hardware store. The taxes themselves are created in Define taxes and VAT rates.

​
Who works where

Tax assignments belong to the company’s fiscal profile: the organization, the country and the fiscal status. The same category can carry different settings in different profiles. Order taxes are chosen for the organization and the profile, not company by company. Bundles belong to one company only.

​
Set the taxes of a category

The simplest way is by category. Mahougnon opens Set a category’s taxes. She says whether the category is taxable, chooses its VAT rate, and lists the other taxes that apply to its items, in the order she wants. Items that follow their category inherit all of it. She reads the result with View a category’s taxes or reviews every category together with List category tax settings.

​
Treat one item differently

A few products do not follow their category. For one of them, Set taxes of an item either lets it inherit from its category, or sets its own: taxable or not, its own VAT rate and its own list of other taxes. View an item’s taxes shows the settings of one product variant or bundle, and List item tax settings lists them for all variants or all bundles.

​
Choose the taxes on orders

Some taxes apply to the whole order rather than to each item. Set order taxes replaces the list of taxes applied on new orders, with, for each, the base it is computed on. View order tax settings shows the current choice.

​
The rules

  • Each action needs its own permission: for categories, items of type variant, items of type bundle, and order taxes.
  • Setting category taxes needs at least one of taxable, VAT rate or other taxes, and refuses any other field. Setting item taxes needs at least one of the mode, taxable, VAT rate or other taxes.
  • A VAT rate must be active and belong to the tax profile of your company.
  • Every other tax must be active, apply to items, not be a VAT, and appear once. Their order is kept.
  • When a non-empty list of other taxes is assigned to a category or an item, the profile must have exactly one active VAT tax for items, and every tax reached through dependencies must be active.
  • Sending an empty list of other taxes on a category removes them all. Setting only the taxable flag or the VAT rate leaves the list of other taxes as it is.
  • An item has an inherit mode or a custom mode. In inherit mode, the item follows its category, its own taxable flag and VAT rate are stored as empty and it cannot list taxes. In custom mode, the taxable flag must be known, sent now or already stored. When an item has no configuration yet, the mode defaults to inherit.
  • A change is refused when it would make a stored price of the category or item impossible to calculate, unless it already could not be calculated. Stored prices are re-checked, not rewritten.
  • Order taxes: the list must be present, and an empty list clears the selection. Each tax appears once, applies to orders and is active. The base is one of items net total, items tax total or items gross total. The selection must be calculable, with no loop and no inactive dependency.
  • Setting order taxes deletes the previous selection of the profile and replaces it. The new list applies to new orders.
  • Reading category or item tax lists accepts a page size from 1 to 100. Listing item tax settings requires choosing product variants or bundles.
  • Category tax actions do not check the company feature that applies to the other category actions.

​
All the actions of this topic