About sales tax for your online store
As Artlogic is a UK-based company the sales tax setup in your online store is based on the UK VAT system. For our US-based clients, we have a temporary way to ensure sales tax is charged for your state but also that it will not be charged for out-of-state purchases.
Please get in touch with us to use this temporary workaround. Do also note that we are developing improvements to our US sales tax options in the online store.
Overview
To calculate tax correctly on check out for US-based clients, we need to create two shipping zones in the ‘Shipping country’ drop-down menu at checkout. This will accommodate both in-state and out-of-state tax rates.
The two options will look like this:
- ‘USA - [Your State]’
If selected, this will charge the customer the in-state purchase rate for your state. - ‘USA - all other states’
If selected, sales tax will be set to 0% and thus will not be charged as this is an out-of-state, tax-exempt rate.
How this will appear to customers
Please note: Charging tax out-of-state depends on the rules of each state and whether you have reached certain thresholds, or Nexus. As we don’t advise on sales tax best practices, we recommend seeking advice from an accountant as to how this should work for your business.
It is up to you to establish whether you have Nexus in each state. If you are collecting sales tax for other states, you can request for us to set up additional options on your menu.
In addition, sales tax rates may vary per county within your state, so if your state applies sales tax to art and publications, you may need to charge different rates within your own state depending on the delivery address. Because your website CMS cannot determine the exact rate of tax based on the shipping location, we recommend that you collect tax in your state at the highest rate of tax.
Getting started
First, ask us to set up your shipping zones
If you wish to use this temporary workaround, we will need to set up two shipping zones for your country as described above.
Please contact us at support@artlogic.net and we'll help you set these up as needed. Once these are ready you can move on to the following instructions, which explain the process for integrated clients and standalone clients.
Integrated website
Steps
If you have an Artlogic database integrated with your Artlogic website, you will first need to set up the correct tax statuses in your database as these feed through to your website.
Create a new tax status for your state
- Log in to your Artlogic database (app.artlogic.net/YourAccountID).
- Go to Accounts > Value lists > Tax statuses.
- Add the correct sales tax status for your state (Eg titled ‘US Sales Tax - Your state’.)
- Click save.
Next, update all relevant artworks with your new tax status
- Go to Artworks > Views > Shared to Website.
- Click Update Multiple > Financial: General > Tax code and tax rate.
- Select ‘US Sales Tax - Your state’ from the drop-down menu for 'Tax code'.
- Select ‘Apply the tax rate specified by the selected tax code’ from the options for 'Tax rate'.
- Click 'Update'.
Continue to the next steps below: Standalone website (and continued integrated clients).
Standalone website (and continued integrated clients)
Steps
If you have a standalone website, start the setup process here. If you have an integrated website, pick up the process here after completing the steps above.
- Log in to your Artlogic website CMS (website-YourAccountID.artlogic.net/admin/).
- Enter the sales tax for your selected state in the Base VAT rate field in Settings > Online sales setup > VAT rates. For integrated clients, this rate will apply to publications and products (not artworks).
For standalone clients, this will apply to artworks as well.
- Navigate to Admin > Store > Shipping and add two new Shipping Zones for ‘USA - Your state’ and ‘USA - all other states’.
- Select:
- 'Add new shipping zone'
- ‘USA - Your State’
- Enable tax
- Select country option from list
- Next, you will want to add the second shipping zone for out-of-state, tax-exempt purchases by selecting 'Add new shipping zone.' This zone will be your ‘USA - all other states’ zone.
If you already have a USA shipping option added, you can just edit this zone rather than creating a new zone. - Do not enable tax.
- Select country option from list.
Test your setup
Once you have completed these steps, you should then have one shipping zone with tax enabled for your state, and a tax-exempt shipping zone for the other states.
We recommend testing your transactions to make sure these settings work as expected.