Add and manage tax rates

A tax rate is a name and a percentage that a line on a quote, invoice, bill, expense or catalogue item can use. Your rates live in Settings › Tax. Changing one later is safe: documents already issued keep the percentage they were issued with.

Who can do this

Owners only. Staff can pick rates on the lines they edit, but can’t create or change them.

1. Open Settings › Tax — Open your account menu, choose Settings, then Tax. The Tax rates list shows each rate as its name and percentage, for example “GST 10%”.
2. Add a rate — Press Add rate. The Add tax rate dialog opens.
3. Name it — Enter a Name (for example “GST”) and the Rate (%). Rates are stored exactly, so 8.875 stays 8.875.
4. Choose the tax type — Pick a Tax type: VAT, GST, Sales tax or Other. For India, the choices are CGST, SGST, UTGST, IGST and Cess. Reports split tax by this type.
5. Say what lines with this rate are — Under Lines with this rate are, choose the supply type a line gets when it picks this rate, such as Taxable or Zero-rated.
6. Tick Compound if it applies — Compound taxes this rate on top of earlier rates in a group, not only on the base amount. Use it for a surcharge charged on tax.
7. Save — The rate joins the list.

The Add tax rate dialog with Name, Rate (%), Tax type, the supply type and the Compound option

Edit, archive or restore a rate

Open the rate’s menu (Actions for the rate) and choose:

• Edit to change its name, percentage or type. Issued documents keep the percentage they were issued with. Drafts and new lines use the new one.
• Archive to hide it from line pickers. It still shows on old documents, marked Archived in the list.
• Restore to bring an archived rate back.

Caution

Archive a rate rather than reusing it for a different tax. Renaming “VAT 20%” to mean something else makes old reports harder to read.

If saving fails you see “Could not save tax rate.” Check the fields and try again.

A 0% rate is how you enter zero-rated sales. To say why a line has no tax, see Mark a line as zero-rated, exempt or non-taxable. To charge two rates together, combine them into a tax group.