Tax codes

Use Settings → Tax codes to manage the codes and percentage rates your account uses for Stock defaults, manual sales lines and purchase-order lines. Tax is the generic amount label throughout these screens and printed purchase orders. VAT-specific guidance still uses VAT.

Confirm the account setup

Confirm your tax setup is a required Getting started decision. It is complete when the account has at least one active tax code, or when an account manager explicitly chooses Confirm no tax codes required. That second choice does not create a zero-rate code or make a legal statement about any individual transaction. Creating or activating a code later replaces it automatically.

The empty Tax codes page uses the saved account country for guidance:

• United Kingdom: account managers can review and create the optional T0 Zero-rated 0%, T1 Standard rate 20%, T2 Exempt 0% and T5 Reduced rate 5% starter set. Zero-rated and exempt remain distinct. These are common bookkeeping conventions and must still be reviewed for the business and transaction.
• European Union: ChannelWeave explains that rates and treatments are country-specific, but does not invent a Europe-wide rate.
• United States: ChannelWeave explains that state, locality and product can affect sales tax, but does not infer a numerical rate from country alone.
• Other countries: account managers create the codes and rates confirmed for their business, or record that none are required.

Country guidance never silently inserts codes, selects a code on Stock, or applies tax to a transaction. Only the reviewed UK starter action creates rows. General exploration, Channel connections and imported Channel orders do not depend on this checklist decision. Adding a line to a manually entered sales or purchase order does: review the account tax setup first.

Create or edit a code

1. Open Settings → Tax codes and choose Create tax code.
2. Enter a unique code, a descriptive label and a percentage rate.
3. Leave Active for new selections enabled when the code is ready to use.
4. Save the code. It is available only within your account.

Codes use 1–32 letters, numbers, hyphens or underscores, start with a letter or number, and are normalised to uppercase. Labels allow up to 80 characters. Rates can be from 0% to 100%, with up to six decimal places. Outside the explicit, reviewable UK starter action, there are no automatically selected country rates or standard codes for new accounts.

Search the list by code or label, sort by code, and use the page controls for larger lists. Signed-in users can view codes. Creating, editing and deactivating them requires permission to manage account settings.

Codes cannot be renamed after creation. Their labels, rates and active state can be changed. Deactivate a code instead of deleting it so existing references remain readable. If another user saves the code while you are editing, reload before saving your changes.

Apply a code

• Stock: select a default Tax code. Picking that Stock item for a manual sales or purchase line prefills the code for review.
• Sales: select an active Tax code on the optional first line or when adding another manual line. The account rate at save time is applied to the line net amount and recorded with the line.
• Purchasing: select an active code when adding a line. When editing a line, Keep recorded tax retains its recorded code and rate, even if the account rate has changed or the code is inactive. Explicitly select a code to apply its current account rate instead.
• No tax code: records no selected code or rate and calculates zero line tax. This does not assert that the sale is legally zero-rated or exempt.
• Stock CSV: a non-empty tax code must already be active in the account. Create or activate it before importing. Codes are checked during validation and again before the import writes Stock changes.

Inactive codes cannot be newly assigned. A Stock item may retain its existing inactive default, but using it on a new order line requires an active replacement or an explicit No tax code choice. An unavailable Stock default is shown for correction, not silently cleared to zero tax.

Stock saves validate newly assigned codes inside the write transaction. If a code is deactivated before validation, the save is rejected without changing the Stock record. Once validated, deactivation waits for that write to finish. Updates use the locked Stock record to decide whether an inactive default is being retained; omitting the tax selection preserves that current default.

What changes do not do

Changing an account code does not recalculate recorded sales or purchase lines. Purchase-line quantity or cost edits recalculate amounts using the retained recorded rate unless you explicitly replace the tax selection. Existing lines without a recorded code keep their recorded rate; a code is not inferred merely because a rate matches.

This is manual tax recording with one percentage per line, not automatic tax determination. Country and currency do not select the rate. It does not add compound taxes, tax registration checks, tax returns or changes to tax calculations supplied by your Connections. Shipping tax remains an explicitly entered amount. Choose the treatment appropriate for your business and transaction.

Refunds use Tax and Refunded tax. A zero recorded order tax total is described as No recorded tax, rather than automatically asserting zero-rated status. The refund ledger still separates net, tax and gross amounts.