When running a tax report from the Reports tab, you will receive a lot of valuable information.
Here's how you can break down the tax report to show you the information you need.
Starting at the very top...
1 - Your company name
2 - The method you ran your report. Learn more between Cash and Accrual reporting here.
3 - The range of this report.
4 - When it was ran. This can be very important to note should you need to re-run your tax report to confirm how much was owed during a given period if your tax rates change.
5 - Download this report to a CSV/Excel document.
Next, let's look at the Summary sections...
6 - This row shows you the different tax types in your account. For example, Entertainment Tax, Sales Tax - Purchase, Rental, and Service. You will also see any projects that didn't have tax applied as 'Untaxed' sales. Projects that didn't have tax because the client, company, or project was either Tax Exempt or marked as having a Tax Resale Certificate will show in the final two columns. You can learn more about marking Tax Exemptions here.
7 - This row will show you the total amount you owe for each tax type for the entire country. This is especially useful for Canadian users who need to track GST VS PST.
8 - In this example, I can see I did a total of $530.00 that was marked with 'Entertainment Tax'.
9 - In this example, I can see I owe $37.10 for my 'Entertainment Tax'.
10 - Here's where you can see a breakdown by State and Tax Type. In the example above, I can see I owe $37.10 to DC in Entertainment Tax, I did $300.00 in sales marked with Purchase Tax, and so on.
Then, let's look into the Detailed section...
11 - Here again I can see this row is dedicated to breaking down the different tax types in my account on a state level.
12 - Here's where I can see the total taxables sales and amount owed for each tax type by state. In this example, I see I did $133.00 total sales in the state of Maryland at a rate of 3%, with a total of $3.99 owed to the State.
13 - Here again I can see this row is dedicated to breaking down the different tax types in my account on a city level.
14 - Here's where I can see the total taxables sales and amount owed for each tax type by city. In this example, I see I did $133.00 total sales in the city of Baltimore at a rate of 2%, with a total of $2.66 owed to the city.
Note: You may see the total taxables sales or owed tax not match if you add all the city totals in a state. This can happen if tax isn't charged on a specific city in a state, or if a city has multiple tax rates that aren't charged at a state level.
For example, Entertainment tax may only be charged in Philadelphia, but not collected by Pennsylvania.
Finally, let's look into the Projects section...
15 - Show/Hide projects included in this report.
16 - Change the different states included in this report.
17 - This rows shows you the Project Information, and different tax types.
18 - These rows show you the details on the specific projects.
Note: Hovering over the Project ID will show you the Tax Location used on this project.
I will also be able to jump right back into the project by clicking the ID.
Note: I can see that I had a project that had Rental Tax, but also included some Untaxed Sales. That'd be a prompt that I need to revisit that project to ensure everything that needs tax has tax applied.