Taxes are not automatically applied when using Thinkific's built in checkout. However, you do have a few options if you need to charge or calculate tax for your courses!
In this article:
Charging Tax
Thinkific is a tax inclusive platform, which means that taxes are included in all of the prices. If you're taking payment via Thinkific's built in checkout, customers will be charged the price set in your pricing settings. We don't currently have a way to add a percentage of tax for purchases, however we have some recommendations and alternate options that you can check out below!
We are currently working on including automatic tax charges in Thinkific's built in checkout when using Thinkific Payments. Stay tuned on all upcoming features with TCommerce here!
For many instructors, our default checkout works just fine! The applicable tax will often be the same for all orders an instructor receives. And, depending on what you're teaching, the tax may not be applicable.
For example, for sales made to customers in the EU, the tax may not be applicable if what you're teaching includes some live interaction, such as one-on-one or group coaching. More on that here:
- VAT rules for supplies of digital services to consumers in the UK
- VAT on Electronically supplied services in the EU
All that said, if charging tax is a requirement for your business, we have some options below.
Recommended Resources
If you are looking for some general resources on charging tax for online courses, we recommend checking out:
Sales Tax Guide for Online Courses
How to Comply With US Sales Tax for Online Courses
Thinkific team members are by no means tax experts, so please check with a local tax expert before making any decisions about whether or not tax is applicable.
Tax Options
Include Tax in Pricing
If you've consulted your tax expert and you'll always be charging at the same rate, the best option is to include tax directly within your course pricing. You can add a note in your course description to let customers know that your pricing is tax inclusive if you like (a great selling point!)
If you are using Thinkific Payments, you'll be able to see on country and zip code/postal code details on your Transaction Report. Using location data, you can determine if you have a tax obligation and the calculate the exact tax amount to submit.
We know that this process is quite manual at the moment and are currently working on including automatic tax charges. Stay tuned on future TCommerce updates here!
If you prefer to go with an integration solution, check out some alternate options below.
Quaderno
You can use Quaderno to calculate tax at different rates. Quaderno has a simple option to charge directly through Thinkific's checkout process or use their direct checkout—with a little extra added to your pricing to cover your tax. Quaderno uses your and your customer's location to calculate whether or not tax is applicable as well as provides invoices to your students.
Quaderno is currently only supported with Thinkific's checkout when using Stripe or PayPal. Quaderno and Thinkific Payments is not supported at this time.
Learn more in our article: Connect with Quaderno
InvoiceBus
If you are using Stripe to receive payments for your Thinkific orders, you can easily integrate with Invoicebus from the Thinkific App Store. Once the app is installed, Invoicebus will start generating invoices for every new course order. Invoicebus automatically calculates the correct tax amount and displays it as a separate line under the invoice totals.
InvoiceBus is not currently supported with Thinkific Payments.
External Payment Solution
Another option is to use an external checkout that supports your tax requirements. Some popular external payment solutions are:
Check out a detailed overview of this set up here: External Payment Solution: What to Consider