Adding taxes is simpler than ever. This is a vital step before adding your products and setting up an integration with accounting software.
This guide covers how to add additional taxes to Lightspeed and how to create group taxes. We'll also talk about the basic taxes in Australia, New Zealand, UK & USA.
What's in this guide?
Adding taxes
Creating group taxes
Assigning taxes to products
Basic taxes
Frequently Asked Questions
Adding taxes
1. Under Company Setting from the Back Office, select Taxes.
2. Select Add a New Tax
3. You will see this dialogue box. Enter the following information:
- Tax Name - Naturally, you would need this
- Tax Code - You also need the code or acronym for the tax
- Tax Rate - Make sure to enter just the number, no per cent sign needed here
4. Select Add Tax
And done! The new tax would appear on the list.
Creating group taxes
Group taxes are added in just as easily. These can be assigned to individual products. On the tax invoice, the taxes will appear separately
Note - make sure that you have first added the taxes you would like to place within a group
1. Under Company Setting from the Back Office, select Taxes.
2. Select Add Group Tax
3. You will see this dialogue box. Enter the following information:
- Group Tax Name - Provide a name for your group tax
- Tax Code - Provide a code as well
- Select taxes - You can choose from which taxes to include from those that you have added
- Tax Group Rate - This is the total percentage from your selected taxes
4. Select Add Tax Group
Nice and easy! The tax group is added to the list
Assigning Taxes to Products
You can assign the Sell Tax as you add the product on Lightspeed . If you added your products prior to this, you can assign the taxes to products from the Products page under the Sell Tax field.
Note - You can also assign tags to products bearing certain taxes so that they are searchable based on what taxes they have. This is useful in the event that you need to change taxes.
Basic Taxes
Australia
- GST - The Australian Taxation Office defines the Goods and services tax (GST) as a broad-based tax of 10% on most goods, services and other items sold or consumed in Australia. You can refer to their website to see a full list of Taxable food and GST-free food
- WET - According to the Australian Taxation Office, Wine equalisation tax (WET) is a tax of 29% of the wholesale value of wine. It is generally only payable if you are registered or required to be registered for GST. You can refer to their website for a list of products that this a tax applies to.
New Zealand
- GST - Inland Revenue defines the Goods and services tax (GST) as a 15% tax added to the price of most goods and services in New Zealand, including most imported goods and some imported services. You can refer to their website for a list of where GST can (and cannot) be charged.
UK
- VAT (Value Added TAX) is a consumption tax placed on a product whenever value is added at each stage of the supply chain, from production to the point of sale. The UK government currently has three VAT rates: Standard, Reduced, and Zero. Prepared food generally falls under Standard VAT within outlined conditions.
USA
- In the USA, sales taxes and wine excise taxes vary per state.
Frequently Asked Question
How do I delete taxes?
You can only delete taxes if they are not associated with any product. So the first step is to find all the products bearing that tax (as mentioned earlier, this is where tags will come in handy). Next, you would need to unlink the tax from each product (you may want to consider doing a bulk edit if there is a lot to edit).
Once this is all done, you can delete the tax.
What's my next step?
- Are you seeing a different currency symbol? Then next up is how to change the currency code from Back Office in just a few seconds.
- Have you added in your products yet? You can add products quickly and easily from the Back Office.
- Do you already have all the hardware you need for your system? Let’s talk about what hardware you can connect to your very own Lightspeed system.