Appearance
Tax & Duties Overview
FluentCart’s Tax & Duties section is a powerful tool designed to help you manage your store’s taxes with ease and accuracy. Staying compliant with tax laws is essential for any business, and these settings give you the flexibility to handle everything from simple sales tax to complex international VAT rules.
Setting up your taxes is a straightforward, two-part process:
- First, you set the global rules. On the Configuration page, you will decide how taxes work across your entire store. This includes setting your main calculation rules and creating different tax classes for your products (e.g., standard rate, reduced rate, or tax-exempt).
- Next, you set the specific rates. On the Rates page, you will define the actual tax percentages for each country, state, or province you sell to.
There are two ways to set up tax in FluentCart:
- During install — the Tax step of the onboarding wizard walks you through the basics (enable tax, choose inclusive/exclusive pricing, pick your EU strategy if applicable, enter your VAT/Tax ID). It's a fast way to get to a working baseline before you open the store.
- From Tax Settings at any time — open FluentCart → Settings → Tax Settings to configure or change everything afterwards. This is where you'll spend most of your time as your tax obligations evolve.
This section contains the full set of guides for working from Tax Settings:
- Configuring Tax: Set your store’s main tax rules, configure VAT reverse-charge behaviour, and manage tax classes.
- Setting Up Tax Rates: Enable the regions you collect in, set per-class rates, and add product or shipping overrides at the country, state, city, or postcode level.
- Tax Filing Feature: Review the taxes you've collected and mark filings as complete.
Selling to EU Customers?
If your store sells to customers in the European Union, VAT compliance requires additional setup beyond the standard tax rates. FluentCart provides a dedicated EU VAT configuration with three collection strategies — OSS (One-Stop Shop), Home Country, and Specific Country — so you can match your exact registration obligations.
By following these guides, you can create a flexible and automated tax system that keeps your store compliant and your checkout process seamless for customers.