Sales tax
What this is for
Tour tees at the merch table and presale tickets are taxable in nearly
every state — and until now the register recorded the price alone,
which made sales tax a March spreadsheet problem. Now it’s a switch:
set a rate for each state where you collect, and merch sales and
ticket presales at events in that state add the tax on top, post it to
its own liability account, and report it by state and month when it’s
time to file.
Rates are set in Company settings, on the Sales tax card —
admins and coordinators can see the rates; only admins change them.
The remittance report is a Sales tax tab on the Finance page,
which belongs to the Finance module and follows your
Can view financials permissions. The registers themselves collect
the tax wherever they already are — Merch, Ticketing, and Receivables.
Setting up rates
One rule drives everything: an active rate per state is what turns
collection on. No rate for a state, no tax at its events — Herding
Cats never guesses a rate, because an honest zero beats an invented
figure.
Open Company settings, then the Sales tax card, and click Add
ratePick the State
One active rate per state — try to add a second and you’ll be
refused. The name prefills itself (California sales tax); type
over it if you call it something else.Type the Rate as a percent
7.25 means 7.25%. Up to two decimals — a longer figure is refused
rather than silently rounded, because two decimals is exactly what
can be stored.Save
The toast says it plainly: Now collecting in CA. From that moment,
merch sales and ticket presales at events in that state add the tax
on top.
The table shows each rate with a Collecting or Off badge.
Editing a rate changes what future sales compute — recorded sales keep
the figures they were computed under.
Rates deactivate; they never delete. Deactivate… on a rate’s
menu stops new sales from adding it, and the confirmation says what
stays: recorded sales keep their figures. The rate remains in the
table, switched off, so the register can always say which rate
produced a number in your history. Reactivate turns it back on.
Rates here are one figure per state — there’s no county or city
layering. Enter the combined rate you actually charge where you
operate, which is a number your accountant has.
What gets taxed — and what deliberately isn’t
Two revenue streams collect tax: merch sales and ticket
presales — the things that are taxable nearly everywhere. That
covers them in all the places they’re sold:
- A sale on the Merch register
- A presale on the Ticketing register
- A merch- or ticket-stream line on an invoice in Receivables
Everything else — entry fees, tuition, media orders, sponsorship —
deliberately collects nothing. That’s not an oversight. Whether a
state taxes competition entry fees varies wildly, and the honest
answer is that there is no clean nationwide rule to build in. Rather
than guess and be confidently wrong in your state, Herding Cats leaves
those streams untaxed — ask your accountant what your state
expects, and bill accordingly.
How the rate is picked, for any sale: the sale points at an event, the
event has a venue, the venue has a state, and that state’s active rate
applies. A sale with no event, an event with no venue, or a venue with
no state collects no tax — there’s nothing honest to compute from.
Pricing is tax-exclusive everywhere: tax is added on top and shown
as its own line. It never hides inside a price.
How the tax shows up
- Recording a merch sale — the dialog grows the arithmetic:
Subtotal, then Sales tax — CA 7.25%, then the Total the
buyer pays. - Recording a ticket presale — the dialog says what’s added:
+ $3.63 sales tax on top (CA 7.25%) — $53.63 to collect. - An invoice — each merch- or ticket-stream line pointed at an
event in a taxed state shows its tax underneath, and the totals read
subtotal + tax. The invoice the customer sees — emailed or via the
private link — carries a Tax row above the total. - The registers’ Revenue tiles stay net of tax. The Merch
register’s tile sums what you earned and names the tax in its note —
because the tax was never your money, which is the next section.
Tax-exempt studios
Some studios hold an exemption certificate. A studio marked
tax-exempt collects no tax on any invoice line, whatever the
stream — the invoice form says so while you build it: Smith Studio is
tax-exempt — no line collects sales tax.
There’s no switch for this in the app yet — ask us to mark a studio
exempt, and keep their certificate on file, because that’s the piece
of paper your state will eventually ask for.
What posts where
The tax you collect is not income — you’re holding it for the
state. The books say so:
- A merch sale posts its revenue lines and one extra line to
2200 Sales Tax Payable, a liability account, under the same sale.
Void the sale and the tax reverses along with the revenue,
automatically. - A ticket presale records its tax on the sale and carries it verbatim
onto the invoice it raises. The tax reaches your books when that
invoice is sent — dated the invoice’s issue date, because the
debt to the state arises when you bill. - An invoice with tax refuses to send if your 2200 account has been
deactivated — nothing partial ever posts.
So your P&L shows the revenue you earned, and 2200 Sales Tax Payable
carries what you owe the state, growing until you remit it.
The remittance report
Finance → Sales tax is the filing-time view: collected tax by
state and month, split into Merch sales, Ticket presales,
and Invoices columns, with a Collected total per row. Newest
month first — “what do I owe this filing period” reads top-down.
Nothing counts twice. A ticket presale you invoice moves columns
rather than doubling: once its invoice posts, the invoice is the money
document, and the figure shows under Invoices instead of Ticket
presales.
Under the table, the ledger’s 2200 Sales Tax Payable balance is
shown beside the report’s total so the two can be reconciled — the
note spells out the differences to expect: ticket-presale tax not yet
invoiced (recorded on the sale, not yet on the books), and anything
you’ve already remitted from the account.
A row whose state shows — means the sale’s event no longer
resolves a venue state — usually a venue edited after the fact. The
tax still counts in the total; it’s grouped honestly rather than
hidden.
Honest limits
- Two streams, no more. Merch and ticket presales (and those
streams on invoices) collect tax. Entry fees, tuition, media orders,
and sponsorship deliberately don’t — the state-by-state map is too
murky to guess at. Ask your accountant. - State-level rates only. One flat rate per state — no county,
city, or district stacking, and no automatic rate lookup. - No filing. The report tells you what each state and month owes;
filing the return and remitting the money stays with you and your
accountant. - On-site money isn’t taxed here. Cash boxes and card batches on
the Settlement sheet are counted as
collected, with no tax line — on-site, tax-inclusive pricing is a
later chapter.