Sales tax, start to filing
Rates, groups, exempt items and exempt buyers, and the filing report.
Aced's tax engine is built for US sales tax in any state: you tell it your jurisdictions' rates once, and every sale from then on is computed, recorded, and reportable to the penny.
Set your rates
Settings → Taxes. Add one rate per jurisdiction that taxes you — state, county, city, special district — as a percentage. Then bundle them into tax groups ("Retail", "Prepared food", "Exempt") and point your categories or individual products at a group. New items inherit their category's group, so day-to-day nobody thinks about tax.
Rates differ by product type in many states (prepared food vs. groceries, tangible goods vs. services, green fees exempt in some states) — that's exactly what separate groups are for. If you don't know your local rates, your state's Department of Revenue site lists them; enter what applies to your address.
What's exempt
Two different things can make a sale tax-free, and Aced handles both:
- Exempt items — put the product in an exempt group (zero rates). Classic example: green fees where state law exempts them.
- Exempt buyers — schools, churches, nonprofits, resellers with a certificate. Open the customer's profile and flip on Sales tax exemption (keep their certificate number in the field — auditors ask for it). From then on, any register sale with that customer attached rings up with no sales tax, and the ticket shows a "Tax exempt" badge so staff can see why.
Filing time
Reports → Sales tax, ready to file shows, for any date range, exactly what you owe each jurisdiction: taxable sales and tax per rate, with refunds netted proportionally, plus your untaxed/exempt sales total (returns usually ask for gross vs. taxable). Export it as CSV, or use the monthly accountant pack which includes the same split.
What Aced deliberately doesn't do
Honesty beats magic here. Aced does not guess your rates from your address, and it does not file returns for you — you (or your accountant) confirm the rates you owe and file with your state. Every number in the filing report traces back to individual sale lines, each stamped with the tax group it used at the moment it sold — so anything an auditor asks about has a paper trail.