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Tax assistance: VAT and sales tax suggested on every sale

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With tax assistance turned on, WrkLst suggests the VAT or sales tax of every line of a sale from what the work is, who buys it and where it goes, following the answers you give in Settings › Tax. It shows the suggestion in the sale, checks the tax before the invoice goes out and charges it in your website shop. You stay in charge: every suggestion can be changed, and WrkLst prepares the figures that you or your adviser file. The suggestions are not tax or legal advice — see Suggestions, not tax advice. This article describes WrkLst 10.

Suggestions, not tax advice

WrkLst's tax features make suggestions. They are not tax or legal advice and do not replace a tax adviser: WrkLst gives you the tools to put your tax adviser's instructions into practice. What it suggests follows from the answers you give in Settings › Tax and from WrkLst's register of rates and rules — decide those answers with your adviser, and check the suggestions with them. You remain responsible for your invoices and tax returns. Settings › Tax and Reports & Analytics › Tax say so at the top, the confirmation that turns tax assistance on says it again, and under every suggestion the Tax section of a sale says A suggestion, not tax advice: check it with your tax adviser.

What it suggests

For every line of a sale — a work, a shipment, any other item — WrkLst looks at what the item is (its tax class, see Tax classes: what each work is for VAT), which of your businesses sells it and where that business is registered, who buys it — a business or a private buyer, with or without a VAT number — and where the work goes and how. From that it suggests the tax:

  • Germany — original artwork at 7 %; screenprints, artists' photographs, prints and merchandise at 19 %; books and catalogues at 7 %. The margin scheme where a work qualifies: VAT only on your margin, none shown on the invoice. No VAT at all for a small business.
  • Private buyers in other EU countries — your own VAT until these sales pass EUR 10,000 in a calendar year, then the VAT of the buyer's country, declared through the EU One-Stop-Shop (OSS). If you chose to charge the buyer's country's VAT from the first sale — and from 2027 as soon as you are registered for OSS — it does so from the first sale.
  • Business buyers in other EU countries — no VAT once the official check has confirmed their VAT number. Without a confirmed number the sale is charged like a sale to a private buyer.
  • Exports — no VAT on a work shipped outside the EU (for a UK business: out of the UK), with the proof of export to keep. A visitor who takes a work home in their luggage pays your VAT and can claim it back.
  • United Kingdom — 20 %, books at 0 %, the UK margin scheme for works of art, antiques and collector's pieces, and exports. A business that is not VAT-registered charges no VAT while WrkLst watches the registration limit. Parcels of £135 or less to private buyers in the UK need UK VAT registration, wherever you sell from.
  • United States — sales tax by state: in your home state, in every state where you are registered, and wherever you are present — an office, storage, works on consignment, an art fair. WrkLst watches each state's limit and tells you when you must register. Resale and exemption certificates, sales through a marketplace that collects the tax, and exports are taken into account.

Every suggestion comes with its reasons in plain words and the law it rests on. The rates and rules come from a register WrkLst keeps current for every account: changes of the EU's standard rates are taken from the EU's own database, every other change is checked by WrkLst before it applies. A change counts from the day it takes effect; a sale already decided keeps the rate it was decided with.

Nothing changes until you turn it on

Tax assistance is off for every account until someone turns it on, and it is set up for each of your businesses separately. Until then, invoices, sales and your website work exactly as before.

Settings › Tax, the Tax section of a work and of a contact, and Reports & Analytics › Tax are open to people whose role includes Accounting (GoBD invoicing, DATEV export) under Settings › User Roles. The Tax section of a sale is there for everyone who edits the sale. A Tax card on the dashboard leads to Set up tax.

Setting it up in Settings › Tax

Settings › Tax shows one card per business, your headquarters first. Its badge says Off, Being set up, On or Setup requested.

  1. Choose Start setting up. WrkLst now goes through this business's sales in the background — back to 1 January of last year, so that the limits are counted correctly — but shows nothing of it anywhere else yet.
  2. Answer A few questions. Who sells? — A gallery or dealer, The artist or An artist's estate or heirs. Whose name is on the buyer's invoice for a consigned work? — Ours if you invoice the buyer and pay the artist, as most galleries do, or The artist's if the artist invoices the buyer and you invoice your commission. In the EU: Are you registered for the EU One-Stop-Shop (OSS)? In the UK: Are you VAT-registered? and Have you told HMRC that you use the margin scheme for works bought from artists or imported yourself? In the US: your sales tax permit, with I have the permit number or I've applied for it. Some homes ask more — an Austrian artist or gallery, an Italian business, a German charity, a Singapore business with its GST, tourist refunds and the Gross Margin Scheme; see Tax assistance by country: what WrkLst covers where you sell from.
  3. Check the Business details: the legal name, the country, the VAT number and Tax number, Small business (no VAT charged) and Margin scheme by default. For your headquarters these are the details printed on your invoices under Settings › Accounting; a change here changes them there too. Settings › Accounting keeps its two switches under Tax scheme as well, and says so: These switches are also in Settings › Tax, with the rest of the tax setup.
  4. Under Registrations, Add a registration for every number you hold — a VAT number, the EU One-Stop-Shop (OSS), the EU Import One-Stop-Shop (IOSS), UK VAT, a US sales tax permit and others — with where it applies, the number, its Status (Registered, Applied for or Ended), Valid from and how often you file under Returns. A German VAT registration can carry the Permanent extension. For a US permit, Where the rates come from offers the California tax office (CDTFA), Stripe Tax, One flat rate (the single rate some states, such as Alabama and Texas, let sellers from out of state charge), New York's rate table by ZIP code (Publication 718) for New York, and Rates I enter, the rates you keep yourself (see Sales tax rates you enter yourself). A permit for California starts with the CDTFA, one for New York with New York's rate table, one for any other state with Rates I enter. With Stripe Tax, the registration says Stripe Tax: Ready once Stripe Tax is turned on in your Stripe account, or what is still missing, and Check Stripe Tax again asks again.
  5. Where you are present already lists your locations. Add a presence for storage, a warehouse, works on consignment, staff or an art fair. In the US, being present in a state means you collect its sales tax there, so WrkLst suggests the presences it finds — works consigned to someone in another state, a fair or an exhibition there — marked Please check: confirm each one, or say it is Not a presence.
  6. Works that need a tax class, below the cards, lists the works whose class is only a suggestion, grouped by type, each group answered with one click — see Tax classes: what each work is for VAT.
  7. Settings for your adviser, folded away, holds what your adviser may want to change: what A buyer we know nothing about counts as, Charge the buyer's country's VAT from the first sale to another EU country (binding for two calendar years), Cash accounting, the Exchange rate for other currencies and the Year the business was founded.
  8. Before you can turn it on lists what is still missing — every work and product for sale on your website needs a confirmed tax class, for example. Once the card says Everything needed is answered, choose Turn on tax assistance and confirm.

From that day WrkLst suggests the tax for every sale of this business, checks sales before their invoices go out, and your website shop charges the tax that follows from your answers. Turn off stops it from today: whatever was recorded stays, and you can turn it on again from the next day.

Sales tax rates you enter yourself

A US registration whose rates come from Rates I enter lists Your rates below it. Until it holds a rate, WrkLst can't suggest the sales tax for sales to that state. Add a rate asks:

  • Where it applies — The whole state, A city (as it is written in the buyer's address), One ZIP code, or ZIP codes that start with … and their First digits: 100 for every ZIP code from 10000 to 10099.
  • What is charged — one line per authority: Charged by (State, County, City or Special district), a Name, the Rate (%) and, where the rate stops at an amount, Up to (per item). Add a line adds another, up to 6; Together shows the rate the buyer pays.
  • Valid from and Valid until — leave Valid until empty while the rate still applies.

A place has one rate on any day. To change a rate, give the old one a Valid until date first and add the new one from the day after: dates that overlap another rate for the same place are refused. Should two rates for the same place ever apply on the same day, the one that starts later counts. Where several of your rates fit an address, the most exact place wins — the ZIP code before its first digits, those before the city, the city before the whole state. The pencil beside a rate edits it; the bin removes it after asking, and WrkLst then stops using it for sales and website orders to that place.

Where you stand

Where you stand says in words how close the business is to the limits that change its tax — Sales to private buyers in other EU countries this year: €7,420 of €10,000, your turnover against the small-business limit, your UK sales against the registration limit, and for each US state your sales against its limit, or the date by which you must register. Show the sales behind this figure lists the sales it counts. A sale WrkLst knows little about counts as one to a private buyer, shipped; correct it with Business buyer or Collected here, or with Not ours for a sale someone else made, which then becomes an external sale. The figures include confidential sales.

When a limit is close or passed, and 14 and 3 days before a deadline, WrkLst emails the people who manage accounting; the notices also stay on the card under Recent notices. The figures by state and period are in Tax reports: thresholds, US sales tax by state and your declarations.

More than one business

A company of its own — a branch abroad with its own VAT number and its own invoices, for example — is a business of its own. Add another business asks for its legal name, country, currency and an Invoice number prefix that tells its invoices apart from your others. Under Locations you then choose which business each of your locations sells as; a sale belongs to the business of its location.

The headquarters is paid through the account's own connections under Settings › Integrations. Another business has its own, under Payment for this business on its card: its Stripe account, with the Publishable key and Secret key from your Stripe dashboard, and — if your website shop sells as this business and is paid through Shopify — its own Shopify shop. For the shop, create an app in Shopify that may manage orders and draft orders, and enter its Shop URL, Admin API access token and API secret key. Shopify signs its messages about paid orders and refunds with that key; WrkLst subscribes your shop to these messages itself at the first checkout, and the address they arrive at is shown below the field — there is nothing to paste into Shopify. Stripe and Shopify each say Connected or Not connected; Remove the keys and Remove the Shopify shop delete what is stored, after asking.

The Tax section of a sale

With tax assistance on, every sale of that business has a Tax section. At its top is a summary in words — for example 7% · VAT of your country: private buyer in Germany — and Why? opens the reasons and the law behind them.

Each line shows its rate and its treatment in words. A line you add takes the suggested rate on its own. Where a line's rate differs from the suggestion, it says Changed by hand. Suggested: 7% with Use suggestion beside it; Use suggestions takes all of them at once. A rate you keep stays as you typed it, marked as changed by hand, and still counts in your figures. If the sale uses one rate for the whole invoice while its works are taxed at different rates — 7 % and 19 %, say — WrkLst asks Switch to a rate per line?

Below the lines are the facts the tax depends on. WrkLst fills in what it can find; correct whatever is different:

  • Where the work goes — taken from the client's address or the website order. If the work goes somewhere else, enter the country, postcode, city and street, or choose Use the client's address again. A US rate needs the full street address. WrkLst asks you to confirm the destination when the client changed, when the shipping address typed on the invoice is somewhere else, or when a US ZIP code is not in its state.
  • How does the buyer get the work? — Picks it up here, We ship it, Their own shipper collects it or We deliver it ourselves. When a private buyer in another EU country has their own shipper collect the work, tick We did not recommend, contact or brief their shipper if that is true: only then is the sale taxed here rather than in the buyer's country. When the buyer picks the work up, add Where the buyer lives and whether The buyer takes it home in their luggage.
  • Where is the work when it's sold? — At our gallery, or Elsewhere: a fair, storage, a consignee or another address. WrkLst fills this in when the work was at an art fair or out on consignment on the sale date.
  • For a Singapore business: Customs (Singapore), when the work is in a Free Trade Zone or a Zero-GST warehouse; It leaves Singapore in someone's luggage (the buyer, their staff or ours); and, where you offer tourist refunds, eTRS transaction issued. See Singapore.
  • Who buys? — A business, A private buyer or Not sure. The Buyer's VAT ID comes from the sale or the client. Check the VAT ID asks the official service — in Germany the qualified check of the Federal Central Tax Office, which also compares the buyer's name and city; elsewhere in the EU the EU's VIES — and shows the answer, such as Checked today 14:02 · ✓ valid · name matches. A tax-free sale to a business in another EU country needs a number confirmed on or before the day of the sale. Where only the format of a number could be checked, the section says so, and such a number does not make a sale tax-free.
  • For a US business: the buyer's Exemption certificate, kept on the contact; a California museum that buys for its permanent collection; and Get rate, which fetches the rate for the address.
  • For a UK business: Goods on approval — the day a work was sent on approval and the day the buyer kept it.
  • Once the sale is saved: the Handover date, the day the buyer got the work, which dates the sale for tax; and Payments received before an invoice, which matter for prepayments and cash accounting.

What still stands in the way shows under Before you can issue the invoice, what you should look at under Please check — each with the button that fixes it, such as Check the VAT ID, Get rate or Use suggestions. A line that is already on an issued invoice says so and no longer changes. For an offer or a hold the tax is shown but never counted. For a gift or a donation WrkLst only reminds you that it can be taxable, and leaves the decision to you and your adviser.

Deciding a sale by hand

Some sales WrkLst does not decide on its own: a work sold at an art fair abroad, or from storage or a consignee abroad; a service whose place of tax it does not cover; a rate typed by hand that fits no treatment. Decide this sale by hand — or Decide by hand on a single line — lets you choose how it is treated At home, say whether there is Tax abroad, and note Why (for your adviser). The decision is printed on the invoice, counted in your figures, and listed in your declarations as decided by hand — check with your adviser. Undo the decision takes it back.

Tax abroad stays at No tax charged abroad unless you choose otherwise:

  • We charge the tax there — the country (in the US, the state), the Rate (%) and Our registration number there. The tax is added to the sale's total, printed on the invoice as that country's tax, and counted under your registration there, once you have added it under Registrations — until then, your tax reports list the sale as Charged without a registration.
  • The fair's agent handles the tax there — the country or state only. Nothing is charged; the invoice says that the tax there is handled by the fair's agent and not charged on this invoice.

If the sale says the work was somewhere abroad when it was sold — at a fair, say — that country is filled in. It can never be your business's own country, or for a US business its own state: the tax at home is what you chose under At home. The line then shows the charge beside its treatment, for example Switzerland tax 8.1%.

Where the reason is something WrkLst does not cover yet — a sale from abroad, a service whose place of tax it has no rule for, a line it cannot decide, a US place whose tax it does not know — Request this setup stands beside Decide this sale by hand. It sends this sale, with what WrkLst said about it, to us; your business's tax assistance stays as it is. Request sent confirms it, and while we are working on it the request's status stands there in place of the button — We're working on your setup request., for example. You can still decide the sale by hand in the meantime. A new sale must be saved first.

On the contact

A contact's own Tax section keeps every check of its VAT number with the result and the official reference, its US exemption certificates — state, kind, form, number, dates, the signed form, and whether it still exempts — and the statements of buyers who said they buy for a business. While an Italian business is set up, Italy (SdI) holds the buyer's Codice fiscale, Codice destinatario and PEC for the SdI file; see The SdI file.

Issuing invoices

With invoice bookkeeping, Issue an invoice checks the sale's tax first. It refuses while something under Before you can issue the invoice is still open — for example a tax-free sale to a business in another EU country without a confirmed VAT number, a work whose unconfirmed tax class changes the rate, a parcel of £135 or less to a private buyer in the UK without UK registration, a rate typed by hand that fits no treatment, a work sold in the artist's name (bill your commission instead), one rate for a whole invoice whose lines are taxed differently, or a business buyer in Germany who needs an e-invoice. If lines still differ from the suggestion, Lines that differ from the suggestion offers Use suggestions, which takes you to the sale's Tax section, or Keep mine (marked as changed by hand).

Either way, with invoice bookkeeping or without, the invoice carries the note each line needs — the margin scheme, a tax-free supply to a business in another EU country with both VAT numbers, an export, the reverse charge — and, for a US business, each line's sales tax. A tax-free sale to a business in another EU country must be invoiced by the 15th of the following month; WrkLst reminds you. Cancel invoice asks Why is it cancelled? — The amount changed, It was wrong or Same sale, issued again — and suggests the answer from what changed; it decides in which period the correction is declared. See Invoices: numbered invoices, e-invoices and DATEV export.

Your website shop

With tax assistance on for the business your website sells as, the WrkLst shop asks for the buyer's address in the cart — and, where it changes the price, whether they buy for a business and their VAT number — and charges the tax for that address. Your own products then have a Tax class instead of a tax rate. See Website settings: hosting, look, enquiries and legal pages.

What is covered

  • Fully covered — businesses established in Germany (charities included), the United Kingdom and California.
  • Covered, without your country's own invoicing rules — businesses in Austria (a gallery, the artist, or an artist's estate or heirs), Italy, Singapore, New York and Tennessee, and in the other EU countries that have no e-invoicing or reporting obligation of their own in force; other US states once WrkLst's rules for them are confirmed. WrkLst suggests the tax but does not check your country's own invoicing rules, and the card says so: ask your adviser about those. For an Italian business WrkLst makes the SdI file of each invoice, which you upload, or your adviser sends — WrkLst does not connect to SdI.
  • On request — everything else: for example EU countries with their own e-invoicing or reporting system (Poland, Belgium, Portugal, France, Spain from 2027 and others), businesses established in Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Australia or Northern Ireland, US states whose sales tax is run locally or charged on the seller's receipts (Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alaska, Colorado, Alabama), VAT groups and deliveries with duty paid. The card of such a business says WrkLst can't suggest the tax for this place yet.

What WrkLst suggests in each of these countries, what the card asks there, what your invoices show and which returns Reports & Analytics › Tax prepares: Tax assistance by country: what WrkLst covers where you sell from.

My situation isn't covered

At the bottom of Settings › Tax, under My situation isn't covered, choose Send a setup request. If you have several businesses, choose the one it is For; tell us under Anything special? what is particular about your situation, and choose Send request; your current setup goes with it. We check whether WrkLst can support your situation; how your sales are taxed is for you and your tax adviser to decide. While we look into the request for a business WrkLst cannot cover yet, its card says Setup requested and tax works as before. The card shows where the request stands, and you get an email when it is done. For one sale, Request this setup in the sale's Tax section sends a request for that sale only; your business's setup stays as it is — see Deciding a sale by hand.

Good to know

  • WrkLst prepares the figures; you or your adviser file the returns. Nothing is sent to ELSTER, HMRC or a US state for you.
  • Only your sales are covered: input VAT, your purchases and acquisitions from other EU countries are not part of it.
  • Sales at an art fair abroad, or from storage or a consignee abroad, are decided by hand — with the tax you charge there, or a note that the fair's agent handles it.
  • A delivery charge on works taxed at different rates is not split for you: WrkLst points it out, and you split it into one line per rate.
  • A gift or donation of stock gets a reminder, not a suggestion.
  • Businesses established in two EU countries, VAT groups, deliveries with duty paid and the artist's resale right are not covered.
  • The Tax section is part of WrkLst 10. A sale saved in WrkLst Classic keeps its tax details; a rate changed there shows as changed by hand.