By default, WooCommerce does not allow admins to apply different taxes for different customer groups (role-based taxes).
This is a problem for many businesses as taxes largely depend on the customer, along with other factors like the customer’s location, the product they are purchasing, and its amount. To cater to this issue, here is a detailed guide on how you can set up role-based taxes on your WooCommerce store using a simple plugin.
We will take you through each step so you can get started within minutes.
Why Apply Taxes by User Roles?
Businesses may wish to apply different taxes to different customers to improve sales, encourage purchases, or support noble causes. You might wish to apply lower taxes on wholesalers or tax-exempt NGOs to support their mission. Thus it is important to consider the audience before implementing taxes on your online store.
How to Apply Taxes by User Roles
To apply Role Based Taxes in WooCommerce, you can go through the following simple steps:
1. Installation and Activatation
Download the .zip file for the WooCommerce Role Based Tax plugin, and from the WordPress Admin, click “Upload” plugin.
Now click “Install Now” and then Activate. These steps will help install & activate the desired plugin. After these steps, you should go under the Admin Panel to view the plugin dashboard, and from there you can get started on using the tool to set up taxes for desired customer groups.
You can explore the step-by-step guide on installing and activating the role-based tax for the WooCommerce plugin here.
2. Global Configuration & Rule Creation
Simply go to the WordPress admin panel and click “Role-Based Tax.” From the Tax Settings, create rules by choosing “Add Rule Settings.”
Creating rules helps automate tax applications for desired customer groups, and it helps you avoid manually applying different taxes to different customer groups. View the step-by-step guide on rule creation to set up role-based taxes in WooCommerce here.
3. Adjust Tax Rates
After you have created the desired rules, you can go to the “Tax Rates” section and edit the rates for each type, including Standard Rate, Reduced Rate, and Zero Rate. After that, you will need to “Edit Role Based Tax” to apply taxes to selected user roles and adjust tax settings for each role as needed.
The standard rate is the default and most commonly used tax rate, while the Reduced rate is a lower tax rate that mostly applies to essential goods.
On the other hand, the Zero rate applies to products that are free of taxes. The various types of taxes depend greatly on your business and your country’s laws. Therefore, the understanding of these is essential.
When discussing products, it is important to note that you can also apply different taxes to different products with the Role-Based Taxes for WooCommerce plugin. Explore product-level configuration for role-based taxes here.
How to Tax Exempt Customers Based on User Roles?
If you wish to tax-exempt special customers or allow users to apply for tax exemption, you can do that using the WooCommerce Tax Exemption plugin. Simply allow specific user roles to claim exemption by displaying a tax exemption form on the My Account page. Customize exemption form fields & show tax exemption status on the My Account page as well. Explore How To Set Up Tax Exemption in WooCommerce here.
Conclusion
In this guide, we explored how to set up role-based taxes in WooCommerce. We learned the importance of tax implementation and the steps required to apply taxes to different customer groups.
Once these changes are made, the taxes are applied automatically, without any manual intervention. For more helpful guides to boost your WooCommerce store performance, we recommend you check out the Addify blog.
