Let me point out some details of how sales tax is calculated, alnelson2112.

QuickBooks Online (QBO) automatically calculates sales tax based on your customer's tax-exempt status, where you sell and ship, and what you sell. For now, setting up a Custom tax rate as a default is unavailable. You'll want to mark each customer as taxable at a default rate so you can choose which tax rate to apply. Here's how:

1. Go to Get paid & pay or Sales, then select Customers (Take me there).
2. Select the name of a customer to expand their details.
3. Select Edit at the top.
4. In the Additional info section, check the box for This customer is taxable.
5. Select Save.

Once done, set a default sales tax rate for all customers. The steps are outlined below: 

1. Go to Taxes, then select Sales tax (Take me there).
2. In the Related Tasks section, select Edit sales tax settings.
3. Select the Default sales tax dropdown to choose the tax you would like to appear as the default sales tax.
4. You can also choose to Mark all new customers taxable and/or Mark all new products and services taxable.
5. When you're done, select Save.

In the meantime, get a detailed look at the taxes you owe and why you owe them. You can run the Sales Tax Liability report to help you ensure that your sales tax information is accurate before filing your return. Go through this article for your guide: Check How Much Sales Tax You Owe In QuickBooks Online.

Let me know if you have any other questions about sales tax. I'm always here to help you all the time.

Well what no one at QB seems to understand is that in Houston TX you have about 50 different districts that collect sales tax. If your feature for "based on location" actually picked the correct entities that would be freaking amazing, but sadly it does NOT. And not only does it NOT pick the right one it changes the default custom tax rate that I assign to each of my customers. 

Please fix this, you have to see how many people have chimed in on this original post!

I am also frustrated with this feature. Based on location should be according to the address we enter on a particular invoice, but it calculates on either the company address or based on the previous invoice you entered. We are service based business, and we provide services across the state and charge sales tax based on the service location. The drop-down feature is also time waste. You should be able to type in but no you go and look for different zip codes every time you enter an invoice. 

QBO does not allow a custom tax rate to be the default!!!!!!!!!!!! Nowhere on this screen or from the Taxes menu does it allow you to set a default. I also have set the tax rate on the customer profile and it reverts back to Base on location. I don't understand why this is so complicated???????

Our issue started after we moved to new Sales Tax up with QBO. There is Based on Location and Custom rate. And with Custom rate you can actually add the tax rate you want but QBO has not made it quick add feature - like auto fill feature. You actually scroll down every time (if you already entered these zip codes) to add these codes. 

Default Tax rate is available when you add a client. In their tax details you can add that. Problem arises when you service multiple locations for that particular client. And that is how our most of clients are set up, so eventually this not work out as a very useful feature for us. 

Thanks for getting involved with this thread, Sam171.

I can certainly understand how an ability to set different tax rates for a customer that's located in multiple locations could be useful and have submitted a suggestion about it as of today.

You can also submit your own feature requests while signed in.

Here's how:

1. Use the Gear (⚙️) icon, then go to Feedback.
2. Enter your suggestion(s) in the Have feedback? window.
3. If necessary, attach a file with your Camera (📸) icon.
4. Select Next.
   

Your feedback's definitely valuable to Intuit. It will be reviewed by our Product Development team and considered in future updates. You can stay up-to-date with the latest news about your product by reviewing Intuit's Product Updates webpage.

You also have the option of checking our QuickBooks App Store for apps which may be able to help you achieve what you're looking to do.

Please feel welcome to send a reply if there's any questions. Have a lovely Friday!

The fact that this thread has gone on for almost a year is ridiculous.  Our company is based in one county and we physically do work on another county and send (ship) our bill to another state for payment.  You're "based on location" feature is calculating incorrectly.  We import our invoices from a third party software and have verified our mapping is correct.

I will submit a "feedback" but as it showed in a previous post they "might" take it into consideration.

If this can't be resolved we'll be forced to move to another software.  QBO is supposed to be user friendly and straight forward.  This has created a huge problem every month when I have to file our sales tax.  When you send out over 500 invoices a month this is a HUGE issue.  I spend all day working on sales tax to correct a problem that QBO CREATED! 

How is this still an open issue??? The admin responses are laughable at best. What is going on here?

Ummm, surely by now we can see that no humans other than those with the problems with qbo are typing here. These responses from QBO are entirely generated by AI software hence why they are completely useless. AI is much much better than people realize and qbo is leveraging it heavily to pretend like they have a "support forum". 

For any hope that QBO can provide a solution, they must first understand the problem. The repeated replies with instructions on how to set up custom tax rates shows that they clearly DO NOT understand the problem.

The problem is quite simple. QBO is using a "Based on Location" tax rate that the user has not control over and we need the ability to control it and turn it off because that "Based on Location" dropdown option is not accurate and creates errors that businesses need to correct and those corrections cost money.

We need to be able to TURN OFF "Based on Location".

The option doesn't exist.

We need it to exist. QBO needs to implement a change.

I do not need instructions to set up custom tax options or to make the ones I'm using inactive. Let me repeat...I DO NOT need instructions for setting up tax options.

This IS a problem. This NEEDS to be fixed.

This.  All this! We are a service based business.  Provide services around the state. We also work with property management companies.  The properties we service for the management companies are all over, but they have the same mailing address. This based on location really screws us up because it changes it to the mailing address. I have to spend hours fixing the tax rate on all the imported invoices that were correct but messed up cause Qbo changed it on import. 

We are having same problem. I don't understand why QBO can't just add this feature unless they never plan on it. Our third party software sends invoices, and 50% of our clients have a different bill to and ship to address that is not the address we need sales tax to be calculated for.

QBO, fix this. (actually there is nothing to fix, just add the button)  We are making plans to move to other system. They claim QBO is where QB Desktop is moving, but I don't see it. Too many features in desktop that work, where QBO fails.  

Since this is ongoing for over a year, or two years. I see my problem as being which software do I move to in order to fix my problem. 

Hi @qbo @Team,

Is there any update on this feature?

This is 2023, I just came back to check if you have added the feature

"Turn off the Based on location feature on an invoice" in the QBO. 

I hope many QBO users are waiting for this feature.

Thank you.

No, it is NOT a third party issue. People have many different third party software and we are all having issues! Hours of wasted time, fixing taxes.

Has this been resolved yet? I'm still spending hours manually changing and I'd really like a fix...

I understand what you're feeling right now, @Hats. As of the moment, there's no update yet about your concern. 

The option to turn off the sales tax based on location is still unavailable. For usual reasons, the QuickBooks program calculates your sales tax automatically because;

• The sales tax exemption status of your customer.
• Where you sell and ship.
• Sales tax classification for your service or product.

I appreciate your patience regarding this matter. Furthermore, you can utilize these articles to help manage your sales tax in QuickBooks Online: 

• Set up and use automated sales tax in QuickBooks Online
• Set up where you collect sales tax

For additional QuickBooks-related concerns, don't hesitate to post them here in the Community. We're always available and willing to lend a hand to your queries. Have a great day ahead.

James Andrew your response sounds like you may know there's going to be a fix for this in the future.  What do you know about the solution?

Thanks for chiming in the thread, @Daisy John.

We're doing our best to make this feature available in QuickBooks Online. However, we still don't have a specific date as to when this will be implemented. 

As a workaround, you'll want to create a separate invoice for the items that will charged a separate tax rate. This way, you'll make sure that QBO will calculate the sales tax based on the correct tax rate.

I know how important to get some features added to QuickBooks that would help you run your business seamlessly. I recommend sending this feedback to our product engineers. We can submit your suggestion to our product engineers by going to the Gear icon and select Feedback.

Also, we can check the votes added to this product suggestion. Here's how:
 

1. Go to this link: Feature Request.
2. In the Search field, enter the request you added before.
3. Click the Search icon or press Enter on your keyboard.
4. Find the appropriate request you submitted and open it by clicking the statement.
5. You'll then see the number of votes on the left side. See the sample screenshot below.

See the recommended articles below for your Sales Tax references:

• Set up and use automated sales tax
• Use the Automated Sales Tax Center

I'm also adding a few references here for ideas about overriding the sales tax of your transactions and filing your tax return.

If you have more questions in the future while doing QuickBooks tasks, please post them here. The Community always got your back.

I submitted the request again.  PLEASE everyone who sees this click on the link 

1. Go to this link: Feature Request.

search "turn off sales tax based on location" and smash the vote button.

Voted! I cannot wait for this "feature" to be disabled or changed.

Looks like I have joined the right party...LOL

I am making a script to sync 3P invoices to QB online. Everything was fantastic until I added a shipping address and all of my taxes got mangled.

It appears you can probably manipulate the customer object on the invoice when syncing it. I am going to try this today and will post back to see if this has an acceptable result

IN the PHP SDK I am looking at this

/**
 * @Definition 
                        Product: QBW
                        Description: US-only, reference to a TaxRate entity indicating the sales tax to apply by default for the customer.
                     
 * @xmlType element
 * @xmlNamespace http://schema.intuit.com/finance/v3
 * @xmlMinOccurs 0
 * @xmlName TaxRateRef
 * @var com\intuit\schema\finance\v3\IPPReferenceType
 */
public $TaxRateRef;

https://help.developer.intuit.com/s/question/0D54R00009g5rlISAQ/i-am-syncing-invoices-with-a-3p-invo...

This is what i came up with

see my solution here.. reply there if you want

https://help.developer.intuit.com/s/question/0D54R00009g5rlISAQ/i-am-syncing-invoices-with-a-3p-invo...

see my solution.. reply there https://help.developer.intuit.com/s/question/0D54R00009g5rlISAQ/i-am-syncing-invoices-with-a-3p-invo...