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nholzmann01
Level 2

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

I have a customer who resells my services. All taxable services are tax exempt for this customer. The customer is correctly marked as tax exempt. When I create an invoice for the customer, no tax is charged. BUT... if I create a project and then assign the same product/service (that's tax-free to the customer) to the customer's project, then QBO wants to charge sales tax for the product/service. HELP! Thanks in advance.

Solved
Best answer September 05, 2021

Best Answers
Kristine Mae
Moderator

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Good observation, Nholzmann01. Let me share how it works in QuickBooks Online.

 

When you create customers, you have the option to exempt them from sales tax. It's different from the project, though. It may be under the tax-exempt customer. However, you're unable to edit and exempt the project itself. That's why the sales tax is still calculated.

 

You'll have to uncheck the TAX column manually as a workaround. This way, sales tax will not calculate. 

 

I'll include this article to help you learn more about sales tax in QuickBooks Online: Use automated sales tax on an invoice or sales receipt.

 

If you have additional questions, don't hesitate to get back to this thread. We'll reply as soon as we can. Keep safe!

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10 Comments 10
Kristine Mae
Moderator

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Good observation, Nholzmann01. Let me share how it works in QuickBooks Online.

 

When you create customers, you have the option to exempt them from sales tax. It's different from the project, though. It may be under the tax-exempt customer. However, you're unable to edit and exempt the project itself. That's why the sales tax is still calculated.

 

You'll have to uncheck the TAX column manually as a workaround. This way, sales tax will not calculate. 

 

I'll include this article to help you learn more about sales tax in QuickBooks Online: Use automated sales tax on an invoice or sales receipt.

 

If you have additional questions, don't hesitate to get back to this thread. We'll reply as soon as we can. Keep safe!

nholzmann01
Level 2

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Kristine,

Thanks for your feedback and insight. I'll use the work-around for now. I'd also recommend adding this as a feature request/backlog item. If a project is assigned to a tax-exempt customer, then the project (in my opinion) should inherit the tax status of the customer (ie: exempt) even if the products/services are taxable.

 

I can't think of a situation where this would not be the desired result. :)

AileneA
QuickBooks Team

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

I appreciate your input from every angle, nholzmann01. 

 

I understand how the workflow you're looking for is beneficial to your business. To ensure your voice is heard, I can pass along another feature request on my end. 

 

The more request this gets, the more likely it'll be part of future enhancements. We always value customers who are keen to give us their feedback. I’ll be sure to follow-up on this matter with our managerial team. This way, they could come up with the appropriate course of action to improve QuickBooks as soon as possible.

 

For the time being, you can visit our blog and sign up to our Newsletter. This way, you’ll receive email updates about new changes in the product. Our developers get inspiration from customers, so your voice makes a huge impact. 

 

Please know that our doors are open for any additional concerns about QuickBooks. Just leave us a message below, and I'll ensure to take care of them. Keep safe.

nholzmann01
Level 2

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Ailene,

I thought your team would be interested in knowing that the newsletter subscription link doesn't work.

When I tried to sign up, I got the following error. 

Screen Shot 2021-09-06 at 10.58.46 AM.png

 

I'll keep an eye on the blog, instead. :)

Carol Flores
Level 1

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Good morning,

 

I am also running into this issue with Projects. My client uses projects for roughly 25% of our projects are exempt. We are unable to fully utilize an app (AvaTax) that we have to calculate tax because the exemption information  does not flow through to projects. Using the Tax box checkbox does not work because we control item taxability through our APP. Is there any date surrounding adding this functionality?

Candice C
QuickBooks Team

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

Good afternoon, @Carol Flores

 

Thanks for chiming in on this thread. Allow me to give you some information on this subject. 

 

I'll pass along your feedback regarding the Projects feature (to have the customer's tax exempt status carry over to the transactions in their project). You can check out our Blog site to keep up with what's new in the product. 

 

I do suggest reaching out to AvaTax's support team so they can look into ways to get the tax exempt status to sync with QBO. Below is a screenshot of how you can get it in touch with them: 

 

 

Please feel free to post a comment if you have any other questions. Take care! 

dLearned
Level 5

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

I agree wholeheartedly, and it is not limited to "project" (as I don't have/use that and it still happens on every invoice).  I can't count the number of times I have had to correct invoices because tax was charged to an exempt customer.  How is any business with more than a handful of customers supposed to remember which are exempt, and what is the point of even entering it into the customer record if it doesn't override tax?  At the very least, there should be a flag/warning indicating that the customer is tax exempt so that the workaround can be used.

 

This is a fail in design.

OutOfTheOffice
Level 1

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

This lacking feature causes so much extra work to manually change the tax code on every project invoice. We provide a lot of work to brokers, and have their projects broken out and have to change the tax code every single time. It makes us look incompetent if we miss one as we expect it to all reflect properly. 

Todd B1
Level 1

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

We have run into this issue also. Not sure why QuickBooks on line has to so difficult to manage.  What we are running into is apparently QuickBooks is looking at the ship to box instead of the Customer info. So even though the customer is in the system as tax exempt it still keeps wanting to charge tax. This happens almost every time we type in a customer.  It is very annoying and hopefully will be fixed soon. The old desktop version was much easier and user friendly for sure. 

ConawayBookkeeping
Level 1

If I have a tax exempt customer (they resell my services) and I'm charging for a project, why is sales tax charged on the invoice?

It does not appear to be an important issue to fix as it is 2.5 years later and this is still a HUGE problem!  I'm sure QBO has an incredible amount of feature requests, however, there is a difference between added features and what should be basic functionality.  This is not the only issue where this seems to be the case. 

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