How to setup Automated Sales Tax for Bigcommerce

Automated sales tax setup will reduce headaches and future-proof your store

When clients are asked what makes selling online difficult, high on the list is always sales tax. It’s difficult to assess how much to charge with varying tax rates in the United States, especially when rates change constantly. Now we’re introducing automated sales tax setup to make tax easier. If you’re required to charge tax in the US, you can use the new automated sales tax wizard to set up your sales tax in seconds. It’s powered by Avalara AvaTax, so the tax rates are highly accurate and will automatically adjust based on changes in local tax laws.

Future-proof your store for internet sales tax

Not only automated sale tax make life easier for online merchants, but it can help future-prof your store. Presently, merchants are required to only collect sales tax in states where they have a physical location like a storefront or warehouse. But if the Marketplace Fairness Act (aka internet sales tax) becomes law, you would be required to charge tax in every US state. Automated sales tax could help with compliance by making it easy to add states to your tax setup.

How to use automated sales tax

From your Bigcommerce control panel, head to Setup & Tools > Tax, click the switch from Manual to Automatic, then click “Automatically calculate sales tax”.

Now just select the states in which you need to charge sales tax.

For more information, check out our Configuring Tax Automatically article.

That’s it! Your taxes will now be calculated automatically using Avalara AvaTax’s continuously updated rates for more than 10,000 US taxing jurisdictions, then applied at checkout. You’ll have one less problem to deal with, and can concentrate on marketing your products and shipping orders.