Tax Exempt: Improve Tax Settings in Your Ecwid Store

Calculating taxes correctly is a big deal for every business owner.

That’s why we are continuously improving the tax settings in Ecwid, in order for them to match your major and minor needs. It’s already possible to collect taxes manually by configuring your Ecwid store to calculate tax rates for different regions, zones, and countries, or to enable an automatic mode for tax calculations.

However, some customers don’t have to pay taxes, for example, non-profit organizations or wholesale buyers. Now you can exempt such customers from paying taxes.

Below you can find a how-to guide on setting up tax exemptions.

Related: Taxes 101 For E-commerce Business Owners

How to mark customers as tax exempt

Before you start with Tax Exempt, check the following settings in your Ecwid account:

• The Tax Exempt feature is available for Business and Unlimited Ecwid plans.
• The Tax Exempt checkboxes are hidden when there is no tax setup in the store. To make them appear, please set up either automatic or manual tax rates in your Control Panel.

Ready to make your tax system even better? The tax exempt process is as easy as these three steps:

1. Go to the Control Panel → My Sales → Customers page.
2. Find the customer in the list by name or email, and click on the pencil icon to edit the customer’s profile.

1. Enable Tax Exempt and don’t forget to save the changes.

Done! Now the selected customers will pay no taxes whatsoever when buying from you. You can always check this status in the Tax Exempt column on the Customers page.

Related: 5 Steps to Sales Tax Compliance for Ecwid Merchants

Make it easy for your customers

If you want to apply a tax exemption, remind your non-taxable buyers to sign in at checkout before placing an order.

This is necessary for the system to recognize them. As soon as your non-taxable customer signs in, Ecwid will apply an individual tax exemption if you have set it up.

Make sure the email address that your non-taxable customer uses to sign in is correct — as the store owner, you can check this email address in the control panel → My Sales → Customers page.

What else is there in Ecwid that simplifies calculating taxes?

In case you are not aware of other cool things that make tax calculations easier, here’s a list of tax-related features you can benefit from in Ecwid:

• Automatically calculate and charge a precise tax rate at checkout depending on the store and customer location. No setup required and works in the U.S., EU, Canada and Australia.
• Keep tax rates and calculation rules up to date with local regulations in the U.S., EU, Canada and Australia.

Learn more: Automatic Tax Calculations in Ecwid

• Generate and automatically file sales tax reports (U.S. only)
• Calculate, collect and report sales tax if the business has presence in several states (i.e. having multi-state sales tax nexus). Applies to the U.S.

Learn more: Automated Tax Reporting And Multi-state Sales Tax Management

• European merchants can automatically calculate EU VAT rates and apply VAT reverse charge for the VAT-registered buyers: Ecwid will ask VAT ID at checkout and apply zero VAT when necessary.

Learn more: How to set up EU value-added tax (VAT) in Ecwid

Read also: Tax Differences Between LLCs, C Corporations, and S Corporations