Google Checkout Blog

Tax made easy!

Wednesday, January 30, 2008



We have received valuable feedback about the process of specifying tax in your cart posts, especially when using Buy Now buttons. That's why we are very excited to release our new "Tax Rules" feature, found under the 'Settings' tab. From here you can specify default tax rates that will be used when your cart posts lack tax information.

For those of you who rely mostly on Buy Now buttons, it is easy to charge tax on your items with these new settings in place. And for those of you who post shopping carts that already contain tax information, you can choose to use this account setting instead.



Thanks to everyone who brought this issue to our attention. We're always on the lookout for feedback like this, so please keep it coming.

PS: In case you weren't aware, there's another way to specify shipping and taxes in your Buy Now buttons: Simply add the few lines of code shown below to your Buy Now button snippet (just don't forget to modify this example code to reflect your actual shipping and taxes).

<input type="hidden" name="ship_method_name_1" value="UPS Ground"/>
<input type="hidden" name="ship_method_price_1" value="10.99"/>

<input type="hidden" name="tax_rate" value="0.0875"/>
<input type="hidden" name="tax_us_state" value="NY"/>