In WooCommerce you can use WooCommerce Services to make tax calculations easier. This uses the TaxJar API to do that for you. Sometimes though, you will have everything configured correctly, but taxes still show as $0 or not at all on the front end of your site. This is often because there is no Nexus available.
To confirm this, make sure you have Automated Taxes enabled.
Now let’s check the logs to see if taxes are not calculating and showing because there is no Nexus.
Go to WooCommerce -> Status -> WooCommerce Services Tab and then scroll down to Taxes Log.
Look for this.
06-13-2018 @ 15:21:52 - :::: TaxJar API called :::: (WCS Tax)
06-13-2018 @ 15:21:52 - Received: {"tax":{"order_total_amount":12.0,"shipping":2.0,"taxable_amount":0.0,"amount_to_collect":0.0,"rate":0.0,"has_nexus":false,"freight_taxable":false,"tax_source":null}} (WCS Tax)
What we are interested in is this. "has_nexus":false,
If that is there, then there is no Nexus.
To understand what that means, take a look at these two articles.
- https://blog.taxjar.com/internet-sales-tax-nexus/
- https://www.taxjar.com/guides/intro-to-sales-tax/#determine-where-you-have-sales-tax-nexus
Which boil down to the following questions.
To determine if you have nexus, ask yourself these questions:
– Do I have a location, warehouse or other physical presence in a state?
– Do I have an employee, contractor, sales person, installer or other person working for me in a state?
– Do I have products stored in a state?
– Do I have a drop shipping relationship with a vendor in a state?
– Do I have an affiliate program with affiliates in various states?
– Do I cross state lines to sell my products at a trade show, craft fair or other event?