Table of Contents
Taxes Setup
Updated
by Mitchell Paul-Soumis
Read Time: 6 mins
Tax Creation in Sonar
Tax creation requires 4 fields to be filled out: Name, Application, Rate, and Type.
- The name section is what appears on the invoice and the account
- The application indicates whether it should be a flat rate or a percentage of the sum which is applied as taxes
- The rate is the amount (so 5 would be either 5 dollars or 5 percent depending on the application selection)
- The type picker allows you to set if it's global to every customer, or dependent on a certain geographical zone
Once created, a Global Tax is done here - it's applied to all customer accounts in your instance. Geographical taxes will require additional configuration.
Geographical Taxes Extra Configuration
When you create a Geographical Tax in Sonar, you then need to configure a Geo Tax Zone
Configuring a Geo Tax Zone will only tax the residents of that zone, and configuring the actual zone itself is very flexible. The only mandatory fields are the Name and the Rate.
Multiple Service Zone Configuration
While Sonar does support integration with Avalara for automated taxation, the software is designed to be robust enough to enable you to create multiple layers of taxation that appear on a line-by-line basis during transactions.
When you provide service to customers in multiple cities, counties, or states, you will need to ensure you have all the layers built. Rate-building occurs on a size basis, starting from the broadest service area to the smallest. As you can see below, the taxes were built in the following order:
- State Tax
- County Tax
- City Tax
The way this system works together allows you to nest multiple Geo Tax Zones within one layer, such as in the case of distinct cities within Colorado:
By nesting these cities under a single Geographical Tax, you minimize not only the number of items, but the number of taxes applied to a service.
Finally, with the taxes configured in this nested manner you and your customers will be able to see all taxes leveraged against the service as it's charged and invoiced.
On the customer's transactions:
Statement Example:
Tax Overrides on an Account
Whenever a tax is applied to an account, you also have the option to apply a tax override. A Tax Override in Sonar allows you to exclude a specific account from the taxes specified during the override's creation. You can add an override to any account by following the directions below:
- From the Accounts window, click on any account name, then from the sidebar that appears click on "Manage"
- From the Account Management view, click on the Billing Tab, followed by the Taxes tab:
- From here, you can add a tax override by using the "Add Tax Override" button:
The modal that opens allows you to select which of your instance's taxes to override, and what the new rate should be:
When to Use a Tax Override
Using a tax override is a way to manually adjust taxes for specific individuals. While there may be several general reasons you'll need to modify the tax rate, this section will highlight some examples that have necessitated such action by customers using Sonar in the past.
Example 1: Tax Exemptions by Area or Individual
The scenario may arise where you have groups of peoples who are exempt from all or some applicable taxes, or who are living in an area where services provided are exempt from being taxed. For example, the GST (or HST in certain provinces) is a tax applied to nearly all goods and services within Canada. However, as outlined in Article 87 of the Indian Act, certain peoples in Canada can be exempt from the taxes charged on services performed on a reserve. In a situation like this, it would mean that any internet services supplied in those areas would therefore not be taxed. There are two ways to approach this scenario:
- A unique service could be created that would not be taxed; this service would be used solely for those accounts receiving service in the specified location (i.e. such as on a reserve).
Using this solution does introduce the risk of the service being erroneously applied to accounts that do not meet the criteria, but does allow you to quickly service numerous tax-exempt locations. - For each account within the tax-exempt geographical area, you would apply a tax override to the individual accounts belonging to those members of the community, for the given rate of the tax within the area of service.
This option does require a small investment of time for each account, but it's easier to credit back taxes paid than account for unpaid taxes as in the first scenario.While accounts themselves can be made tax-exempt, this function would prevent any taxes from being charged to the particular customer. For example, if you made an account tax-exempt it would not be charged for any taxes, even if taxes besides the GST/HST should still apply.
Example 2: City and Zip Tax Rate Discrepancies Due to Specific Location
In some cases, you may have two customers that, at least based on their civic address, belong to the same City and Zip Code. The reality may be much more complicated. We'll examine a scenario in which Alice and Bob need to be taxed at different rates despite their addresses being part of the same City and Zip Code.
Alice lives inside City C, in a downtown apartment. Bob lives on the outskirts of City C, enjoying the rural life. Both Alice and Bob are paying for the same service with your organization, and this service has the geographical state, county, and city taxes applied. Because the serviceable address belongs to the same City and Zip Code, Sonar's geographical taxation system has no way of knowing that due to Bob's rural location outside of City C he actually pays 0.5% less tax than Alice who lives downtown.
In order to resolve this discrepancy, and not overcharge Bob, a tax override should be placed on his account to reduce the rate of the taxation in order to accommodate Bob's specific location.
Example 3: VOIP Service Fees on an Otherwise Tax-Exempt Organization
Due to the nature of how Sonar handles taxation and fees, certain mandatory fees need to be added as a Global Tax. An example of such a fee is the E911 fee charged on VOIP services.
Because this fee needs to be applied universally across all accounts, it is typically added as a Flat Rate, Global Tax within Sonar. This means that Tax-Exempt Organizations, such as churches, receiving these VOIP services cannot be made directly tax-exempt within their account's billing parameters. Each tax applied to their account as a result of the services they subscribe to needs to be manually overridden in order to prevent taxes from being invoiced while still allowing mandatory service fees to be collected.
