Description: Understand how tax settings work in Multi-Location Management, including assignment methods, jurisdiction-level configurations, tax rules, and how inheritance and overrides apply across locations.

To watch more how-to videos, visit our video section.

Overview

Tax settings in Multi-Location Management can be applied at various levels of detail, enabling businesses to support either basic sales tax or complex, jurisdiction-based configurations. Taxes can be assigned directly to items or through revenue classes and are managed centrally at the Enterprise level, with support for location-level overrides.

Tax Assignment Methods

Within Settings, there are two primary ways to apply taxes:

  • Assign via Revenue Class

    clipboard_3f2deb5d-8e3a-42c4-8a92-24b9606e9fc5.png

    • Items are assigned to a Revenue Class
    • The Revenue Class is assigned to one or more taxes
    • Useful for applying consistent tax rules across groups of items
  • Assign Directly to Items

    image (1).png

    • Taxes can also be assigned directly to individual items
    • Ideal for edge cases or when only a few items have special tax treatment

Types of Tax Configurations

You can set up taxes at a granular level or use high-level flat rates depending on your reporting and compliance needs.

Granular Jurisdiction-Based Taxes

Example:

  • State Tax: 3%
  • County Tax: 2%
  • City Tax: 1%

This setup allows for more detailed reporting or for meeting regional compliance, such as:

  • State tax applies only to prepared items
  • Municipal tax applies only to carry-out orders

High-Level (Combined) Taxes
Example:

  • Sales Tax: 7%

Simplifies configuration for businesses that do not need jurisdiction-level reporting.

Tax Rules

image (2).png

Tax rules can be configured at the individual tax level to control which items or order types a tax applies to. This enables setups like:

  • Excluding specific tax from unprepared food items
  • Applying a city tax only to takeout orders

Assigning Items to a Tax

From the Edit Tax screen, you can assign items to the appropriate tax, giving precise control over which items are taxed.

Tax Inheritance & Overrides

Taxes are typically created at the Enterprise level, then inherited by locations. Visit the Create and Manage Taxes article for details. This allows you to define standard tax structures at the top level while customizing as needed per location.

Inheritance Behavior

  • By default, taxes created at the Enterprise level are inherited by locations.
  • These can either be:
    • Active by default (then disabled at specific locations), or
    • Inactive by default (then enabled at specific locations)

Override Options

You can override tax behavior at the location level in the following ways:

  • Activate/Deactivate taxes per location
  • Change tax assignment:
    • Override whether a tax is applied via revenue class or item
    • Inactivate tax assignment per location while keeping it in place at the Enterprise level
  • Override Tax rate setting a different rate per location than the default Enterprise rate 

Best Practice: Define your standard tax structure at the Enterprise level and rely on location-level overrides only when necessary. This promotes consistency and simplifies management.