CrystalCommerce is integrating with TaxCloud, to help you better handle collecting and remitting sales tax for your online orders. With this article, we aim to answer some of the common questions regarding TaxCloud and our integration with it.
What is TaxCloud?
TaxCloud is a tax compliance service. They offer filing, audit support, and are a certified tax service provider in 25 states.
Why is setting up TaxCloud important?
One of the biggest reason we are integrating with TaxCloud is it's a way to handle sales tax for states where you have a nexus. Even if you don't have a nexus in any states outside of your home state, TaxCloud calculates the sales tax during your website checkout based on the municipality that the customer is ordering from. This way you can make sure all customers from within your state are being charged the correct sales tax rate depending on where in your state they are ordering from.
TaxCloud has two main services: Automated Compliance and Collected Compliance. Automated Compliance includes the 25 states that TaxCloud is a certified service provider for. TaxCloud will file your tax ID with those states for you. For more information on pricing, please visit https://www.taxcloud.com/pricing/core-services.
Collected Compliance is for the remaining states. You'll want to turn these on in TaxCloud if you have a nexus in those states (including your home state). For these states, TaxCloud doesn't file for you by default (though you can request them to do so), but they do supply the tax calculations.
How to Get TaxCloud Set Up:
To set up your account, head to https://taxcloud.com/go/get-started/ and fill out the form. Be sure to select CrystalCommerce as your marketplace. You will then receive an email from them prompting you to reset your password. If you don't receive this email, go to https://taxcloud.com/go/sign-in/ and click on "Forgot Password" to reset it. The email address for your TaxCloud account will be the email address we have on file for you.
Once you reset your password and log in successfully to TaxCloud, follow the on screen prompts to set up your account. When setting up a payment method with them, do not choose the credit card option, because they charge a 7% transaction fee. Instead, you'll want to set up your bank/checking account with them as your payment method, which they will draw from to file your tax payments for you.
At a minimum, you'll want to enable your home state within TaxCloud. You also may want to enable Automated Compliance, but there is a fee involved (please see here https://www.taxcloud.com/pricing/core-services). Automated Compliance is a way to ensure you are charging sales tax in the 25 states included in it. If you have nexus in any of those states, you will want to enable it. For any other states, you will want to enable them separately if you have a nexus in them.
Finally, when you are finished with the set up, click "go live" to complete the TaxCloud setup. You will also need to check the box for "Enable TaxCloud" on your Account > Preferences page in your admin:
The "Sales Tax" rate in the field above it will be used for your POS orders.
For More Information:
Visit TaxCloud's support page here: https://taxcloud.com/support/
How to Go Live with TaxCloud: https://taxcloud.com/support/is-there-a-step-by-step-guide-on-how-to-go-live
TaxCloud Charges: https://taxcloud.com/support/charges