Tax Rates
Tax rates are defined per country and linked to products, so each product is taxed at the rate it should be.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Commercial:
- Carts — the cart itself and its options
Architect Panel → Data:
- Datastores — then View Data on the cart table, and look for the row actions
What a rate carries
A country, a name, a description, a percentage, and whether it is the default for that country. The description matters more than it looks — it is where the rate’s scope is written down, and that is what somebody reads when deciding which rate a product needs.
UK rates are supplied
Standard at twenty per cent, Reduced at five, and Zero, each with a description of what it covers — children’s car seats and domestic fuel for reduced; books, most food, children’s clothing and prescribed pharmaceuticals for zero.
They are a starting point, not tax advice. Categorisation is genuinely difficult at the margins and getting it wrong is your liability.
Products are linked to rates
Explicitly, as a row action on the tax rate showing its applicable products. So assigning rates can be done from either end — per product, or by working through a rate and adding everything that belongs to it.
The second is usually faster and more accurate, because you are making one decision at a time rather than remembering it per product.
The default is a fallback, not a decision
Products with no explicit rate get the country default. That is sensible behaviour and a trap: a product that should be zero-rated and was never linked is silently charged at standard, and nobody notices until a customer does.
Audit for products with no explicit tax type before launch.
Take advice
Which rate applies to which product is a question for your accountant, not for a platform administrator. The platform applies what you tell it; deciding what to tell it is a professional judgement.
Rates change
Governments change them, sometimes with short notice and sometimes temporarily. Know who watches for that and how quickly you can act, because the change applies from a date whether you updated the shop or not.
Selling abroad multiplies the problem
Rates are per country, so international selling means a rate set per destination and rules about which applies. That is a decision to take before opening a market, not after the first order.
Worked example
A shop assigns tax rates by working through each rate’s applicable products list rather than product by product. Before launch it ran a check for products with no explicit rate, which found eleven zero-rated items about to be charged at twenty per cent. The rates were reviewed with its accountant.
Recommendations
- Assign from the rate, not product by product.
- Audit for products with no explicit rate.
- Take professional advice on categorisation.
- Name who watches for rate changes.