QuickBooks 2015: The Missing Manual

Chapter 21. Working with Sales Tax

Sales tax can be complicated, particularly in states where the number of tax authorities has exploded. You might have to pay sales taxes to several agencies, each with its own rules about when and how much. QuickBooks’ sales tax features can’t eliminate this drudgery, but they can help you pay the right tax authorities the right amounts at the right time—and that’s something to be thankful for.

QuickBooks can help you track sales tax based on customers’ locations and sales-tax-paying status. The program can also keep track of non-taxable sales. This chapter shows you how to set up the program to handle all these tasks.

Once the sales tax setup is done, QuickBooks takes over and calculates the sales taxes due on invoices and sales receipts you create. However, after you collect sales taxes from your customers, you need to send those funds to the appropriate tax agencies. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to remit sales taxes to the right organizations on the schedules they require.

Setting Up Sales Tax

If you have to work with sales tax, the first step is turning on the QuickBooks sales tax preference. Then you set up sales tax codes and items to tell the program about the taxes you need to collect and remit. This section shows you how to get started.

Turning on QuickBooks Sales Tax

When you created your company file, QuickBooks may have turned on sales tax for you if the industry you selected typically tracks sales tax. But if you just started selling ...