Taxes

Learn more about taxes

You are responsible for identifying your business’ sales tax obligations and for correctly configuring your business’ sales tax settings. This article does not constitute tax, legal, or other professional advice. If you have questions, consult your professional tax service provider. Tax service providers can help you with identifying your business’ sales tax obligations and provide advice on how to configure your business’ sales tax settings.

When tax settings are applied to your business, sales tax is assessed and calculated for each shopper’s order based on the settings, tax rates, and override rules that you've configured. You can manage tax settings from the Settings tab of the merchant console.

Manage taxes

Use the merchant console to activate tax settings, add locations to specify where you need to collect taxes, configure how tax should be calculated for each location, create tax categories and tax override rules.

You can manage tax settings from the Settings tab of the merchant console. In Tax settings are tabs for General and Categories. Toggle on Apply taxes in the General tab, to view or set up Tax regions and access the Categories tab. If you need to apply and collect taxes on any of your Buy with Prime products, choose Apply taxes in the General tab. Then, configure which locations need to collect taxes by choosing Manage locations & overrides and then Manage locations. You can create tax categories in the Categories tab. You can create and manage tax override rules by choosing Manage locations & overrides and then Overrides.

Apply tax settings:

Note: Applying taxes does not automatically start calculating and charging taxes for your customers’ orders. You must specify which locations need tax calculation and collection.

Step 1Open the merchant console.

Step 2Choose Settings, and then Taxes.

Step 3Choose Apply taxes.

Step 4When prompted to apply taxes at checkout, choose Apply taxes.

Step 5Choose Manage locations & overrides to begin adding locations where you want sales tax applied. 
 

Add location:

Note: You need to add locations for every state where you need to charge sales tax on your store's website. You can select more than one location at a time.

Step 1Open the merchant console.

Step 2Choose Settings, and then Taxes.

Step 3Choose Manage locations & overrides.

Step 4Choose Manage locations.

Step 5Select locations where you want to apply taxes. You can choose up to as many as necessary. Confirm selection in the dialog box. Tip: You can use the search box to quickly find the location that you need to select.

Step 6Choose Save changes.

Note: After you Confirm selection in the dialog box, your selected locations will be added to the Locations table.
 

Configure tax calculation method:

Note: For each location you add, you can configure settings for how tax should be calculated.

Step 1Open the merchant console.

Step 2Choose Settings, and then Taxes.

Step 3Choose Manage locations & overrides.

Step 4Select Change tax rate for a Location. If you are selecting more than one location to edit at the same time, check the box(es) next to each location, and choose Change tax rate.

Step 5In the dialog box, select Auto if you want Buy with Prime to automatically apply the sales tax rate that's calculated from a third-party service provider based on each order's information. The tax rates that are calculated include state and local jurisdiction taxes.

Step 6Select Manual and enter a tax rate in the provided text box if you want to apply a manual custom tax rate for the orders that are being shipped to addresses in that given state. The tax rate that you can manually enter can have up to four digits after decimal point.

Step 7Choose Save.

Step 8Choose Save changes.  

Create tax category:

Note: Tax category allows you to group products that you would like to configure to follow the same unique tax rule. It’s your responsibility to understand how your products are taxed in the jurisdictions that you are responsible for collecting, filing, and remitting taxes.

Step 1Open the merchant console.

Step 2Choose Settings, and then Taxes.

Step 3After applying Taxes, choose Categories.

Step 4Choose Create tax category.

Step 5Enter the General Information details, then choose Select products.

Step 6Select products for the tax category, and then choose Save.

Step 7Choose Create.

Note: The tax category you've set for a product will apply to all of its variations (such as size or color).
 

Create override:

Important: The Create override button will be inactive until you add at least one location and one tax category.

Note: After you create a tax category, you need to create an override rule so that the sales tax rate that you set for the override is used for the product(s) in the tax category.

Step 1Open the merchant console.

Step 2Choose Settings, and then Taxes.

Step 3After activating Taxes, choose Manage locations & overrides.

Step 4Choose Overrides, and then Create override. 

Step 5Select the location, tax category, and override rate, and then choose Create.

Step 6Choose Save changes.

Tax service providers

Disclaimer: Buy with Prime is providing this tax service provider list solely as an informational resource. If you choose to retain a tax service provider, you will be contracting directly with that provider, which will be providing services to you at your direction. Buy with Prime does not endorse any tax service provider or their services.

The following tax service providers have experience working with ecommerce businesses:

• Alton | Contact
• Avalara | Contact
  
• Avask | Contact
  
• FCBA | Contact
  
• Lucria | Contact
   

For more information about tax service providers, go to the Amazon Service Provider Network.