Setting Up Taxes

Sunshine Photo Cart includes a built-in tax system that calculates taxes based on your customer's shipping address. You can configure location-based tax rates, control how prices are displayed, and mark individual products as taxable or non-taxable.

How to Set It Up

1. Go to Sunshine > Settings > Taxes
2. Check Enable Taxes
3. Add your tax rates (see below)
4. Configure the display and pricing options
5. Save your settings
6. Make sure each product that should be taxed has the Taxable checkbox checked (in the product editor)

Adding Tax Rates

The tax rate table lets you define rates based on location. Each row has four fields:

• Country — Select a country, or choose "All countries" for a catch-all rate
• State / Province — Optional. Narrow the rate to a specific state
• Zip / Postal Code(s) — Optional. Narrow further to specific zip codes. You can enter multiple codes separated by commas (e.g., 90210, 90211, 90212)
• Tax Rate — The tax percentage (e.g., 8.5 for 8.5%)

Rate Matching

Rates are matched from top to bottom — the first matching rate wins. Put your most specific rates (with zip codes) at the top and broader rates (country-only or "all countries") at the bottom. You can drag rows to reorder them.

Example setup:

In this example, a customer in Beverly Hills (90210) pays 9.5%, other California customers pay 7.25%, New York customers pay 8.875%, and all other US customers pay 6%.

Default Customer Location

This setting controls what happens when a customer hasn't entered their address yet (for example, while browsing the cart before checkout):

• No location by default — No tax is shown until the customer enters their address at checkout
• My business location — Uses your business address (from Sunshine > Settings > General) to estimate tax before the customer enters their address

Price Display Options

Display Prices

Controls whether product prices shown on your site include tax or not:

• Excluding tax — Prices are shown without tax. A separate tax line appears in the cart and checkout totals.
• Including tax — Prices are shown with tax already added in. No separate tax line is displayed.

Prices Entered With Tax

Tells Sunshine whether the prices you enter in your product settings already include tax:

• No, prices do not have tax included — You enter base prices and Sunshine adds tax on top
• Yes, prices do have tax included — You enter final prices and Sunshine extracts the tax portion

Price Display Suffix

An optional text label that appears after prices, such as "(incl. tax)" or "(+ tax)". This helps customers understand what the displayed price includes. Leave blank for no suffix.

Per-Product Tax Control

Each product has a Taxable checkbox in its settings (under the General tab when editing a product). Only products marked as taxable will have tax applied. This lets you exempt specific products — for example, digital downloads may not be taxable in your jurisdiction.

Shipping methods also have their own Taxable checkbox, configured in Sunshine > Settings > Shipping for each shipping method instance.