[WooCommerce] 6. Testing Tax Rates (Optional)
Note: until you have activated your Online Merchant Account, no recurring Autoship Orders will be created. However, you can still test the functionality of creating Tax Rates for Scheduled Orders.
Autoship Cloud Tax Rates help to provide your Autoship Customers with an approximate calculation of the tax that will be applied to when their Scheduled Order processes.
Why Setting Up Tax Rates for Scheduled Orders is Optional
Ultimately, your WooCommerce Store will calculate and apply the Tax Rate when a Scheduled Order processes.
- Tax Rates entered into WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Tax Rates are calculated and displayed on Scheduled Orders but are not actually used when the Scheduled Order processes to create an Order in WooCommerce.
- When an Autoship Scheduled Order processes to create an Order in WooCommerce, the Tax Rates calculated for the created Order are applied by your WooCommerce Tax settings (or a 3rd party plugin like Avatax or TaxJar)*.
- If no Tax Rates are entered into WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Tax Rates, Customers will see a “TBD” value displayed on their Scheduled Orders. Taxes will still be calculated and applied by your WooCommerce Store whenever a Scheduled Order processes to create an Order in WooCommerce.
*If you are using or are interested in a 3rd party tax software plugin, it's suggested that you confirm with the plugin author how taxes will be applied to Orders created using the WooCommerce REST API.
To see where Tax Rates are applied when a Scheduled Order is processed, please see our help doc: How an Autoship Order is Processed under the heading "How Processing Works".
Adding & Testing a Tax Rate for Scheduled Orders
- In your Wordpress Admin, navigate to WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Tax Rates
- Click the add button (displayed as “ + “ ) to create a new Tax Rate
- Fill in the fields that apply to your Store:
- Name (OPTIONAL): Enter a name to describe the Tax Rate (example: TX State Sales Tax)
- Tax Class (OPTIONAL): If you use Tax Classes in WooCommerce, enter the slug of the Tax Class
- Shipping Address (OPTIONAL): You can enter as many values to identify who should be charged Tax based on the customer’s shipping address
- Example: charge 6.25% to customers with a shipping address in Texas:
- Country: United States
- State: TX
- Rate: 0.0625
- Example: charge 8.25% to customers with a shipping address in Austin, Texas:
- Country: United States
- State: TX
- City: Austin
- Rate: 0.0825
- Example: charge 6.25% to customers with a shipping address in Texas:
- After setting up Taxes, visit your WooCommerce store as a customer and complete a checkout with 1 or more products scheduled for a future order.
- Note: you should complete your checkout using a shipping address that is taxable (for example: a shipping address in Texas if you have set up a Tax Rate for State: TX)
- As a Customer, visit the “Scheduled Orders” page within My Account to confirm that the tax rate setup in Autoship Cloud is displayed on each Scheduled Order
- In your Wordpress Admin, navigate to WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Scheduled Orders and edit the Scheduled Order you placed as a customer to confirm that the Tax Rate you created is applied correctly.
Products with Tax Classes
If you have assigned Tax Classes to your WooCommerce Products you must create separate tax rates for your product tax classes!
The Tax Class entered into WP-Admin > Autoship Cloud > Tax Rates should match the "slug" of the corresponding Tax Class in WooCommerce.
Examples:
- "Reduced Rate" tax class, will usually have a 'slug' of "reduced-rate" so your Autoship Cloud Tax Rate would use a Class of: reduced-rate
- "Zero Rate" Tax Class, will usually have a 'slug' of "zero-rate" so your Autoship Cloud Tax Rate would use a class of: zero-rate
Learn more about WooCommerce Tax Rates and Tax Classes here.